Heart Surgery Outcomes Reporting Project

Committed to Transparency in Our Cardiac Surgical Results

The Heart Institute at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has a longstanding commitment to transparency in our clinical outcomes. We believe that patients and parents should have access to validated clinical data in order to make informed decisions regarding pediatric care, and that publicly reporting data is a powerful incentive to quality improvement in care.

In 2001, our Cardiac Program began publishing clinical results on the Internet. In 2013, with more advanced reporting capabilities, we launched an initiative to replace the previous public reporting. We reverse engineered the Society of Thoracic Congenital database queries and inclusion/exclusion criteria in order to provide real time surgical results. 

Today, our Real Time Outcome Report replicates the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) results. We then validate the results by hand when the biannual STS report is released. The Real Time Outcomes Report sources dynamic data daily from the directly from the Cardioaccess database. We include non-risk adjusted mortality as well as length of postoperative stay. We believe postoperative length of stay is a surrogate marker for complications and excellence of outcomes: our median Norwood length of stay of 16 days versus the STS length of stay of 49 days indicates a very low incidence of tracheostomy, gastrostomy, or neurological complications. Results are posted electronically and only validated for accuracy without additional editing.


Repair of Tetralogy of Fallot in Nearly 400 patients, a Single Center Experience: 1995-2019

May 22, 2019 – The Heart Institute at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital remains dedicated to providing the very best and safest experience for patients undergoing congenital heart surgery. This report will review the program’s 24-year surgical experience in repairing children with a diagnosis of tetralogy of Fallot (TOF).

Repair of Truncus Arteriosus, a Single Center Experience: 1995-2019

April 30, 2019 – The Heart Institute at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital remains dedicated to providing the very best and safest experience for patients undergoing congenital heart surgery. This report will review the program’s 24-year surgical experience in repairing children with a diagnosis of truncus arteriosus.

The Arterial Switch Operation: A Single Surgeon, Single Center Experience: 2001-2019

April 10, 2019 – The Heart Institute at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital remains dedicated to providing the very best and safest experience for patients undergoing congenital heart surgery. Today we report 18 years of outcomes for patients undergoing the arterial switch operation for complete transposition of the great arteries who were operated by Dr. Redmond Burke.

Nicklaus Children's Heart Institute Reports 100 Percent Survival Rate for 2018

April 03, 2019 – The Heart Institute at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital has reported that all 270 children who underwent congenital heart surgery at Nicklaus Children’s in 2018 survived. Program directors are elated to report that as of this posting, more than 380 consecutive patients have undergone cardiac surgical procedures at the hospital without a single death.