SCTS are pleased to inform you that the latest edition in the Blue book series describing activity and outcome of cardiac surgery in Great Britain and Ireland is published on the SCTS website today. As you will discover, it is a very different book from previous iterations, and for good reasons as so much as changed. It is also the first to be published by SCTS alone, supported by a research grant from Heart Research UK. I am very grateful to my co-editor Stuart Grant, and all the authors who have so generously provided their time, experience and skill to put this all together. I hope you will think it worthwhile and enjoy reading about our national activity and further improvement in survival since the turn of the 21st century.
I tried to focus on what I considered the key trends during this era, and also to look at the overall national outcome and to move away from direct comparisons between hospitals and individual surgeons. As you will see, mortality in hospital has reduced further, and in the future, we need to concentrate on other outcome measures to keep the momentum of improvement going, and SCTS and NICOR are already working on this.
Finally, without stating the obvious, I wanted to thank all SCTS members personally for all their efforts to collect this data, as everything you read here is a direct result of the patients you treated and the information you entered since 2001.
David Jenkins
Chair SCTS Cardiac Surgery Audit 2013-2019
Previous Books
- 5th Adult Cardiac Surgery Blue Book
- 4th Adult Cardiac Surgery Blue Book
- 3rd Adult Cardiac Surgery Blue Book
- 2nd Adult Cardiac Surgery Blue Book
- 1st Adult Cardiac Surgery Blue Book