Clinical Decision-Making

Dr. T. Sloane Guy describes how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting hospitals and patients in the US and what it means for the cardiothoracic surgery specialty.

Dr. Alan D. L. Sihoe offers an international perspective on COVID-19 and shares his personal experience and thoughts on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected Hong Kong and what it means for the rest of the world. 

Dr. Thomas E. MacGillivray explains how the ISCHEMIA trial does not negate or even contradict the multiple previous clinical trials demonstrating the superiority of surgical revascularization over medical therapy (or PCI) in patients with specific anatomic patterns of coronary artery disease.

The article "Surgical Volume Matters When It Comes to Repair of Primary MR" highlights a presentation from Dr. Vinay Badhwar at TCT 2019 that showed the volume of mitral valve repair or replacement at both the hospital and surgeon levels was inversely related to the success of the mitral valve repair rate. Dr. James R. Edgerton describes the article, what it means for the cardiothoracic surgery specialty, and his view on the topic of a volume-outcome relationship in mitral valve surgery.

Surgeons with a higher number of unprofessional behavior reports also had a significant increase in their patients' 30-day operative complication rates.

CT surgery is one of the most technically, cognitively, and physically demanding fields. CT surgeon performance does correlate with patient outcomes, so this issue needs to be addressed in our field.