CCAS-STS Database Update
By David Vener, MD
We are winding down the third full year of our data collection for the CCAS – STS Congenital Heart Surgery and Anesthesia Database and we’ve made enormous progress. The Fall 2012 data harvest by the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and the STS is now complete and undergoing analysis, but initial results show that we’ve collected a total of nearly 30,000 distinct anesthetic records from January 1, 2010 through June 30, 2012.
Thirty-one anesthesia groups from around the country are participating, reflecting both a wide geographic and practice pattern, from small programs to some of the largest across the country. The vast majority of our data is coming out of the cardiac operating rooms, which account for approximately 75% of the reported cases. Of the total cases, 45% represent CPB cases, 22.1% No CPB Cardiovascular (BT or Central shunts off bypass, mediastinal exploration/closure, PA Bands, etc.), and Thoracic procedures 4.8%. Outside of the operating room, 10.8% of our cases are from the cath lab and 9% represent non-cardiac, non-thoracic procedures with cardiac anesthesia.
The first publications and abstracts from our data are now in progress and we hope to provide data to any speakers at the CCAS conference this Spring in Las Vegas who wish to utilize data from our efforts and the surgical data now available to us. A brief survey conducted by the Database Committee shows that many of the participating programs are beginning to utilize the data for internal QA/QI purposes.
Going forward into 2013, we will see an update of the data fields for anesthesia incorporating many of the changes suggested by our membership to try and streamline data entry as well as minimize confusion (such as eliminating “primary maintenance anesthetic”). Adverse events related to anesthesia have also been revisited, expanded and clarified. On the surgical side, they’ve added “anesthesia related complications” to their list complications. It should be interesting to see how often that box gets checked off! Tempting as it is, we’ve refrained from adding surgical complication or whining to our list.
The results from our data sets will be presented at a number of forums in the upcoming year, including at the CCAS/SPA meeting at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas and at the World Congress for Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Cardiology in Cape Town, South Africa. The database committee wholeheartedly welcomes queries to the data base by interested researchers, who may also incorporate data from the surgical side of the data set.
Please contact David Vener, MD at vener@bcm.edu to find out how to submit a query to the STS Access and Publications Committee, which vets all data requests before sending them on DRCI for processing. Any data that is to be presented for either publication or presentation is considered a “Major” request and is reviewed every month to two months by the committee.
