Child heart surgeons access clearer picture of their success rate

For the first time, teams that care for children needing heart surgery have been able to review their short-term success rate better across all the different operations they perform. Graphic data charts, devised by analysts at UCL, now allow child heart surgeons to spot and investigate trends in survival and act promptly on any concerns. Published today in the journal Heart, a new paper describes how charts showing survivals to, and deaths within, 30 days of surgery are being generated and studied by teams at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Evelina Children's Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. The study follows recent controversy around comparisons of deaths rates following surgery. Importantly, the charts account for very different levels of risk faced by different children - from under one percent risk of death to more than 25% - and help hospital teams spot any underlying trends. The risk estimates come from peer-reviewed work by the same team published last year using UK national data. Dr Christina Pagel, lead author of the paper from the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit, said: "The software tool that we've developed provides teams with a way of routinely monitoring their own risk-adjusted results, which they've not been able to do previously because of the complexity and diversity of their work." - The software tool that we've developed provides teams with a way of routinely monitoring their own risk-adjusted results, which they've not been able to do previously because of the complexity and diversity of their work.