Society of Thoracic Surgeons

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons is a Chicago, Illinois (USA)-based medical specialty professional society in the field of cardiothoracic surgery. Membership worldwide includes more than 7,400 surgeons, researchers, and other health care professionals who are part of the cardiothoracic surgery team. The society's official journal is The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

STS members are dedicated to ensuring the best surgical care for patients with diseases of the heart, lung, esophagus, and other organs in the chest. The society offers clinical practice guidelines to assist physicians and other health care providers in clinical decision making by describing a range of generally acceptable approaches for the diagnosis, management, or prevention of specific diseases or conditions.

Nineteen guideline documents are currently available, including Blood Conservation Guidelines, Cardiac Surgery Risk Models Guidelines, and Use of Antiplatelet Drugs in Patients Having Cardiac and Non-Cardiac Operations. In 2012 the organization contributed, with others, to the development of guidelines for treating Ischaemic heart disease.

The STS National Database was established in 1989 as an initiative for quality improvement and patient safety among cardiothoracic surgeons. The Database has three components—Adult Cardiac Surgery Database (ACSD), General Thoracic Surgery Database (GTSD), and Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD)—and now houses more than 6 million surgical records. The STS National Database has grown to be the largest database of its kind in medicine and is one of the pioneers in the analysis and reporting of risk-adjusted outcomes in cardiothoracic surgery.

In late 2010, the Society launched STS Public Reporting Online, an initiative through which participants of the ACSD could voluntarily reported their performance on coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgeries. Since then, ACSD public reporting has evolved to include aortic valve replacement (AVR) surgery and CABG+AVR. Public reporting from the CHSD was added in 2015, and public reporting from the GTSD is scheduled to begin in 2016. Currently, STS Public Reporting Online includes more than 400 STS National Database participants. Consumer Reports and U.S. News & World Report have both relied upon STS Public Reporting Online data for their respective hospital ratings programs.,

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