The cardiac surgery program at the Heart Institute has seen a dramatic increase in surgical volume over the last five years. The growth speaks to our burgeoning regional and national reputation as a high-volume destination cardiac surgery program and our commitment to improving outcomes.

Having grown from a relatively small program with 330 cases in 2010, the Heart Institute’s case volume has mushroomed to over 575 cases in FY16. Further, pump-cases have grown by a dramatic 44 percent.    

“Patients are coming from around the region, the nation and the world,” said James Tweddell, MD, Executive Co-Director of the Heart Institute. “We have built a reputation for taking-on high acuity patients and we are receiving referrals for those patients from around the region.”

With three dedicated heart surgeons — and the addition of a shared surgeon with UK HealthCare (James Quintessenza, MD, will lead the cardiac surgery program at Kentucky Children’s Hospital) in 2017 as part of a collaboration to improve cardiovascular care for children in the region — our team is treating some of the most complex pediatric and adult cardiac cases anywhere.

In order to provide transparency and to honor the public’s right to know, the Heart Institute has also chosen to participate in the Society of Thoracic Surgeon’s Congenital Heart Surgery Database (STS/CHSD) public reporting system, which includes risk adjusted mortality as well as an overall ranking of program performance using a star rating.

Outcomes:

• Since FY13, the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) has decreased the length of stay by an average of 2.9 days per patient, with an overall decrease of 36 percent
• Norwood mortality is 5.56 percent (FY16), nearly three times lower than the STS benchmark (15.70 percent)*
• Pump cases have increased by 44 percent since 2010
• Surgical volume has increased by almost 70 percent since 2010

*Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) 2016 Spring Harvest Report: Table 18 Benchmark Operations: Overall Aggregate, Jan 2012-Dec 2015