Cardiac & Thoracic Surgery Update

Podcast Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Cleveland Clinic Cardiac Consult, brought to you by the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic.

Marc Gillinov, MD:

Welcome to the Annual Report for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. This is an annual event, I think this is my 25th time here, and every year the message remains the same. We're better than we were last year. And in addition, we are the best and the biggest. It's hard to be both of those at once, but we are the best and the biggest program in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery in North America. We'll show you a lot of numbers today illustrating and demonstrating these points, but what the numbers don't show is, at a granular level, why we are what we are, why are we so good year after year. And, of course, it's the people. It's the people in this room. It's their dedication, it's their innovation, it's their teamwork. There's no other program in which people work together so often and so well in such a selfless fashion. So, while we show a lot of numbers, the real message here is thank you to everyone in this room, everyone listening to everyone in this 970,000 square foot Heart Center who makes the results what they are.

Here are the promised numbers. Last year was the busiest year ever for us in cardiovascular surgery in northeastern Ohio. Also, huge productivity in thoracic and pediatric surgery, bringing the total to nearly 7,400 patients treated by this department. In adult cardiac surgery, it was our busiest year ever, and this year promises to be even busier. And I know we all feel that every day in the operating rooms, in the ICUs, and on the floors.

We do everything. There is no procedure to help patients that is not done in our buildings by our teams. And we do everything well. Specifically, your risk of a patient's risk related to heart surgery here is lower than it is anywhere else in the world. And this is a consistent finding as you see over the last 5 years, and it goes back 25 years. That's the reason that, based upon the data, we get three stars across all categories ranked by the STS in cardiac surgery.

The story is the same in general thoracic surgery. Best teams, best results, super high volume. And again, every kind of thoracic procedure is done by our surgeons and done extraordinarily well with an incredibly low overall mortality, or to frame that in a different way, the overall best survival in the country.

Patients appreciate the numbers. That's one reason they come here. But they also come here because of the experience. In blue you see the patient experience overall rating in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery consistently far higher than the target and the national average. And as a consequence, nearly 100 percent of patients who have surgery here would recommend us to their friends, their family, acquaintances, they're happy they came here, and they recommend it for others.

Where do the patients come from? We're not a local hospital. Most hospitals depend upon their local catchment area. Our catchment area is the world. Only a minority of our patients come from within our own county, Cuyahoga County, another 29 percent come from the surrounding counties in northeastern Ohio. People travel from the rest of Ohio to get here, and that's a short trip. But people take a longer trip and anyone who flies into and out of Cleveland knows it's not so easy, but people do it. 40 percent of our patients come from outside the US and the rest of our catchment area is literally the rest of the world, as patients come from 40 countries outside of the US for cardiovascular care, and they come to Cleveland.

As a consequence, admissions in our building related to Cardiothoracic Surgery represent 43 percent of all the admissions in the building. So, our team serves nearly a majority of the patients that come to this building, and they come not for the building, but for the people in the building. And going forward, over the next hour or so, we'll get a little bit deeper into each of our areas' specialty. Thank you.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. We welcome your comments and feedback. Please contact us at heart@ccf.org. Like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or listen at clevelandclinic.org/cardiacconsultpodcast.