The Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery specialises in diagnosing and surgically treating disorders of the heart, lung and chest. The cardiovascular surgery would include valve repair and replacement, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, thoracic aneurysms, heart failure and transplantation. The thoracic surgery team specialises in the diagnosis and providing surgical care to patients with diseases of the lungs, trachea, oesophagus, chest wall and mediastinum.
In 2005, the department performed 756 surgical procedures. It is known that improved clinical outcomes are demonstrably linked to centres with high surgical volumes.
Our surgical distribution for the period of January to December 2005 is shown in the charts below.
Cardiac Operative Risk Additive EuroSCORE
|
EuroSCORE |
No. of Cases |
Mortality |
Predicted Mortality
|
|
0 – 2 (low risk) |
205 |
0% (0) |
1.18%(1.06%- 1.29%)
|
|
3 – 5 (medium risk) |
309 |
0.97% (3) |
3.99%(3.90%- 4.09%)
|
|
6 & above (high risk) |
242 |
6.20% (15) |
8.12%(7.85%-8.39%)
|
The risk of the surgical procedures is assessed using the EuroSCORE (European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation) system. These scores are stratified into low risk, medium risk and high risk with expected mortality of 1.18%, 3.99% and 8.12% respectively.
For the year 2005, the National Heart Centre achieved 0% mortality in the low risk category, 0.97% (versus an expected 3.99% mortality) in the medium risk, and 6.2% (versus an expected 8.12% mortality) in the high-risk category.
The Society of Thoracic Surgeon (STS), USA is the largest database of cardiac surgeries in USA and many world-renowned heart centres like Cleveland Clinic benchmark their outcomes against STS. Similarly the surgeries carried out at NHC are also benchmarked against STS standards.
To learn more about the clinical outcomes on NHC's major procedures, please click on any of the following.