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Our cardiac surgery program, founded in 1983, has maintained an electronic database from the beginning of the program. We are proud of the fact that every patient who has had heart surgery at Lancaster General has an electronic record containing detailed privacy protected clinical information. In 1992 we joined the newly formed Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Adult National Cardiac Surgery Database which allows our practice to compare our results to national standards. At present, there are over 15,000 records in our local database each representing an admission during which heart surgery was performed. We use our cardiac surgery database primarily to guide clinical decisions and treatment protocol development. Additional patient care initiatives are tracked and then reviewed at our monthly interdisciplinary team meeting. This data has also been used to publish our results in journal literature and to compare journal publications to our experience. Plans are currently underway to join the STS General Thoracic Surgery Database which gives special attention to lung cancer surgery. Click here for selected slides of our results.
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