Choosing the Best Heart Care for Your Child: Why Outcomes Matter
When your child needs heart surgery, choosing the right hospital can feel overwhelming. You want the safest care, the best doctors and the brightest future for your child. But how do you know which hospital is the right choice? Many families look at survival rates right after surgery – but that’s only part of the picture.
Why isn't short-term surgical data enough when making a decision?
Most hospitals share data about what happens within 30 days to one year after surgery. These short-term outcomes include survival rates and complications. They’re important—but families need to know what happens years later, not just weeks or months after surgery.
To give families this bigger picture, Children’s National Hospital created the Cardiac Outcomes Registry (CNCORe). This first-of-its-kind database tracks results from more than 15 years of heart surgeries. It shows how children are doing 5, 10 and even 15 years after surgery.
This means parents can see:
- Long-term survival rates
- The chances of their child needing another surgery or procedure
This data is provided for the following conditions:
- Tetralogy of Fallot
- Aortic arch coarctation
- Atrioventricular septal defects
- Transposition of the great arteries
How does long-term cardiac outcomes data help families make better decisions?
At Children’s National, we are proud of the exceptional outcomes our heart surgery team achieves. But as Yves d’Udekem, MD, PhD, division chief of Cardiac Surgery, says: “Great short-term numbers are not enough. We need to know what happens years later.”
That’s why long-term data matters. It helps families choose care that supports their child’s health for life.
Cardiac Surgery Long-Term Outcomes Data
View our Cardiac Surgery Long-Term Outcomes to explore the data and learn more about what these numbers mean for your child’s care.