Hickey, Patricia

Background: Aiming at fostering local development of cardiology and cardiovascular surgery centers in developing countries, the nonprofit organization Children’s HeartLink (CHL) encourages centers to participate in the International Quality Improvement Collaborative Database for Congenital Heart Disease (IQIC). The definition of parameters and data to evaluate patient treatment provides an opportunity to improve quality of care, reducing morbidity and mortality. The objective of the study was to analyze the outcomes of the partnership between CHL and IQIC database with a single pediatric cardiology and cardiovascular surgery center for seven years providing continuous follow-up to guide actions aiming at morbidity and mortality reduction in patients with pediatric and congenital heart diseases. Methods: Data were collected from January 2011 to December 2017 independently and with external audits and included preoperative information (demographic data, nutritional status, chromosomal abnormalities), Risk Adjustment for Congenital Heart Surgery (RACHS-1) score, and postoperative information such as infections or complications within the first 30 days or until hospital discharge and/or death. Results: In the preoperative period, there was a trend toward an increase in the number of newborn patients. The postoperative period showed significant surgical procedure variations between groups for RACHS-1 risk category ( P = .003), prevalence of risk categories 2 and 3, and an increase in risk categories 4, 5, and 6, mainly in the last two years. Decreases in surgical site infection ( P = .03), bacterial sepsis, and other infections (both P < .001) were observed. At the 30-day postoperative follow-up, there was a decrease of in-hospital ( P = .16) and 30-day ( P = .14) mortality. Conclusion: The partnership between CHL and this seven-year analysis of IQIC database demonstrated structural and human flaws, whose resolution led to significant decrease in infection and reduction in mortality despite an increase in the complexity of our pediatric and congenital heart disease population.