[A quality improvement program in cardiac surgery. Four-year experience from the Ospedali Riuniti of Trieste].

Dissatisfaction with clinical outcomes prompted an intervention to assess and improve processes and outcomes in a cardiac surgery unit.Starting on September 1st, 1998, 1836 consecutive patients requiring a heart operation in our unit were prospectively enrolled by recording a series of anamnestic, clinical and procedural descriptors in a dedicated database. Expected mortality rates were estimated by means of nine different stratification models,...