BMJ  2005;330:319-320 (12 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7487.319

Editorial

Surgery for congenital heart conditions in Oxford

New report shows that Oxford's mortality is in the middle of the national range

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The NHS in the United Kingdom fears another "Bristol," where preventable or excess adverse outcomes may go undetected and unresolved for a prolonged period. In Bristol, reports of excessive surgical mortality among children having heart surgery in the early 1990s led to an independent public inquiry, which concluded that the mortality in children younger than 1 year who were having open cardiac surgery was unacceptably high.¹ In October 2004 the BMJ published an article saying that similar problems may be emerging in relation to surgery for congenital heart disease in Oxford.² Is this really the case?

The Bristol Royal Infirmary inquiry had explored several sources of data that may have detected this inferior performance, and all were found deficient in one way or another. The UK cardiac surgical register run by the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons was not only anonymised, but it was based on diagnosis rather than operation . . . [Full text of this article]

University College London, The Heart Hospital, London W1G 8PH (Bruce.Keogh@uclh.org)

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Related Articles

Hospital episode statistics v central cardiac audit database

Paul Aylin, Alex Bottle, Paul Elliott, and Brian Jarman
BMJ 2007 335: 839. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

The value of administrative databases

Mohammed A Mohammed and Andrew Stevens
BMJ 2007 334: 1014-1015. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Use of administrative data or clinical databases as predictors of risk of death in hospital: comparison of models

Paul Aylin, Alex Bottle, and Azeem Majeed
BMJ 2007 334: 1044. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

The case for slowing down

Kamran Abbasi
BMJ 2005 330: 0. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Cardiac mortality in children in Oxford hospital is not excessive

Caroline White
BMJ 2005 330: 324. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Bridgewater, B, Keogh, B (2008). Surgical "league tables": Ischaemic heart disease. Heart 94: 936-942 [Full text]  
• Aylin, P., Bottle, A., Elliott, P., Jarman, B. (2007). Hospital episode statistics v central cardiac audit database. BMJ 335: 839-839 [Full text]  
• Mohammed, M. A, Stevens, A. (2007). The value of administrative databases. BMJ 334: 1014-1015 [Full text]  
• Aylin, P., Bottle, A., Majeed, A. (2007). Use of administrative data or clinical databases as predictors of risk of death in hospital: comparison of models. BMJ 334: 1044-1044 [Abstract] [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

HES data analysis needs more accurate interpretation

Abdullah S A Jibawi
bmj.com, 20 Feb 2005 [Full text]