This press conference took place on January 24, 2017, at the STS 53rd Annual Meeting in Houston. For more information, contact media@sts.org.
Survival statistics, surgeon-specific experience, and complication rates are the types of information most wanted by parents of children with congenital heart disease, according to a survey released at the 53rd Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS).
STS launched public reporting of outcomes from its Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD) in early 2015, as a continuation of its commitment to increase public awareness and understanding of cardiothoracic surgery procedures. Public reporting of outcomes from the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database began in 2010.
“Public reporting for congenital heart surgery is definitely a work in progress, with the diversity of the field and wide spectrum of congenital heart defects being some of the greatest challenges. Each hospital’s case mix is unique, as are the specific defects treated at the individual institutions. This makes the comparison of outcomes across many different hospitals difficult,” explained Mallory L. Irons, MD, MBE, from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, PA. “Our research emphasized that parents have valuable opinions about the content and format of the information that should be provided. How data are presented may be more important than the data itself, with the type of visual display employed affecting the degree to which parents correctly interpret the data presented.”
To read the full release, visit sts.org/media.
