The STS National Database is known worldwide as the “gold standard” for quality improvement and patient safety in cardiothoracic surgery. Launched in 1989, the Database includes approximately 8 million patient records. In this roundtable discussion, Drs. Dave Shahian, Felix Fernandez, Jeff Jacobs, and Vinod Thourani explain how they’ve used data from the Database for making improvements at their own hospitals, for research projects, to understand the cost-effectiveness of various procedures, and to demonstrate the importance of the care that cardiothoracic surgeons provide.
