The Cardiac Center team performs more than 850 pediatric heart surgeries a year, including open heart and closed heart procedures and heart transplants. Open heart procedures, which represent a major portion of our volume, require cardiopulmonary bypass (heart-lung bypass machine) and are usually the most complicated and complex procedures.

Pediatric heart surgery survival rates reflect the number of patients who survived within 30 days of the surgery or until the time they were discharged, whichever period is longer.

We track outcomes from common procedures as “Quality Indicators” for congenital heart surgery. The following data shows CHOP's outcomes for these procedures.

The cardiac surgery indicators are included in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Congenital Heart Surgery Database and in the National Quality Forum (NQF) standards for pediatric heart surgery. The STS Congenital Heart Surgery Database contains data from over 100 congenital heart surgery centers in North America. The NQF is a nonprofit organization that sets or endorses standards to measure quality in healthcare.

Common procedures

• Open heart/cardiopulmonary bypass cases
• Arterial switch operation (ASO)
• Arterial switch operation and ventricular septal defect repair
  (ASO and VSD)
• Closure of atrioventricular septal defects (complete AVSD)
• Coarctation of the aorta, (isolated) repair
• Fontan procedure
• Glenn procedure
• Norwood procedure
• Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) repair
• Truncus repair
• Ventricular septal defect (VSD) repair