About this site
About this site
The Healthcare Commission, the independent health watchdog in England, is committed to making a real difference to the delivery of healthcare. One of the ways the Commission does this is by promoting improvements in clinical care through a programme of national audits.
The information on this website has been collected from hospitals with specialist heart surgical units in the UK as part of one of the key national audits sponsored by the Healthcare Commission. It shows information about rates of survival for particular surgeons and hospitals.
Presenting rates of survival
Heart surgery is a major operation and it is natural for patients and their families to want to know more about risks and rates of survival. Great Britain has a good track record for high quality, successful heart surgery. On this website, we present the results for heart surgery as rates of survival, rather than rates of death. This is the same approach that is used to present rates of survival for cancer patients.
Factors such as ill health, age and lifestyle affect the chance of a patient surviving a major operation. The rates of survival on this website take account of more than 15 potential risk factors for the patients who have had heart surgery. The Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery has been concerned for some time that presenting crude rates of survival with no allowance for potential risk factors could create a culture in which there is a reluctance to operate on patients who are considered high risk.
These rates of survival will be updated annually
Adjusting for risk
Rates of survival are displayed in this website as follows:
The expected rates of survival are calculated using the logistic EuroSCORE model. This model allows us to calculate the likely rates of survival for heart operations, taking into account the age and health of the patients and the type of operation. It is a popular model because it is relatively simple. However, recent evidence from the UK and parts of the USA and Australia show that, since 2002, hospitals have tended to do better than the model predicted. This reflects improvements in technology and surgical and anaesthetic techniques.
Using EuroSCORE provides a good starting point. We have also calculated the expected rates of survival by making an adjustment to the scoring based on the current UK only information. The adjustment for UK performance means that more people are expected to survive and is therefore a tougher comparison.
All measures should be reviewed and revised as new techniques in surgery or better anaesthetics, for example, become available. The Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery and the Healthcare Commission will regularly review the techniques used in heart surgery and adjusts the level of risk where appropriate.
How good is the data we use?
The information provided on this website is collected in different ways by different hospitals. Some hospitals have better resources than others for collecting data, and this may affect the quality and completeness of the data. The following table shows the completeness of data collected by the individual hospitals.
| Unit Name | Completeness of data | SCTS data accreditation |
|---|---|---|
| Aberdeen Royal Infirmary | 0.0% | n/a |
| Belfast Royal Victoria Hospital | 80.87% | n/a |
| Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital | 99.86% | n/a |
| Blackpool Victoria Hospital | 99.99% | n/a |
| Brighton Royal Sussex County Hospital | 99.77% | n/a |
| Bristol Royal Infirmary | 99.96% | n/a |
| Cardiff University Hospital of Wales | 98.00% | n/a |
| Coventry Walsgrave Hospital | 98.67% | n/a |
| Edinburgh Royal Infirmary | 0.0% | n/a |
| Essex Cardio | 0.0% | n/a |
| Glasgow Royal Infirmary | 0.0% | n/a |
| Glasgow Western Infirmary | 99.82% | n/a |
| Hull Castle Hill Hospital | 94.88% | n/a |
| Leeds General Infirmary | 97.75% | n/a |
| Leicester Glenfield Hospital | 97.76% | n/a |
| Liverpool Cardiothoracic Centre | 99.94% | n/a |
| London Bart's and the London | 92.96% | n/a |
| London Guy's & St Thomas' Hospitals | 99.63% | n/a |
| London Hammersmith Hospital | 71.32% | n/a |
| London Harley Street | 89.87% | n/a |
| London King's College Hospital | 95.51% | n/a |
| London London Bridge Hospital | 89.58% | n/a |
| London Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals | 99.65% | n/a |
| London St Anthony's | 0.0% | n/a |
| London St George's Hospital | 89.87% | n/a |
| London St Mary's Hospital | 92.56% | n/a |
| London The Heart Hospital | 99.76% | n/a |
| London Wellington Hospital | 90.79% | n/a |
| Manchester Royal Infirmary | 99.98% | n/a |
| Manchester Wythenshawe Hospital | 99.78% | n/a |
| James Cook University Hospital | 98.45% | n/a |
| Newcastle Freeman Hospital | 99.85% | n/a |
| Nottingham University Hospital | 99.98% | n/a |
| Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital | 98.95% | n/a |
| Papworth Hospital | 89.92% | n/a |
| Plymouth Derriford Hospital | 92.32% | n/a |
| Sheffield Northern General Hospital | 98.35% | n/a |
| Southampton General Hospital | 90.84% | n/a |
| Stoke-on-Trent N Staffordshire Royal Infirmary | 96.75% | n/a |
| Swansea Morriston Hospital | 97.12% | n/a |
| West of Scotland Golden Jubliee | 0.0% | n/a |
| Wolverhampton New Cross Hospital | 98.21% | n/a |
For more information about the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery data accreditation initiative, which is unique to heart surgery, please visit www.scts.org.
The information published on the website is an analysis of data provided by hospitals and individual surgical units. While every effort has been made by the Healthcare Commission to assure the quality of the data, ultimate responsibility rests with the hospital and individual surgical units concerned.