The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Heart Surgery Database: 2023 Update on Outcomes and Research

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD) continues to be the most comprehensive database of congenital and pediatric cardiothoracic surgical procedures in the world and contains information on 664,210 operations as of June 30, 2023. The thirty-fifth harvest of the STS CHSD data was undertaken in Spring 2023 spanning the 4-year period January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2022, and included 144,919 operations performed at 114 participating sites in North America. The harvest analysis was successfully executed by the STS research and analysis center. The overall unadjusted mortality rate was 2.68% and has remained stable over the four years included in the current harvest window. Mortality is highest in neonates (7.4%) and lowest in children (1.1%). As in prior analyses, observed mortality and postoperative length of stay in the database increase with increase in STAT categories. This article summarizes contemporary outcomes and provides the odds ratios for the CHSD risk model variables based on this analysis. In addition, this article describes on-going efforts to improve data collection and augment analytical approaches. Lastly, five research publications completed in the last year utilizing data from the CHSD are also summarized.