title: [Morbidity following cardiac surgery. A proposal for qualification].
abstract: The authors propose a new scoring table to quantify morbidity events related to cardiac surgery. They intend to quantify the relative impact of each occurred event and also to calculate and score the sum of all morbidity events occurring in a given patient. The table was constructed based on the opinion of a panel of international experts that were asked to quantify the morbidity events on the proposed list. Their answers were integrated and analyzed according to the inferring Delphi's method, in order to establish the relative weight of each event, scoring events for each system. The methodology that was adopted is throughly discussed and speculation is made over the use of the table score for related morbidity in cardiac surgery, namely as a tool to compare both the surgical performance and for quality ranking. The scoring table is now being tested clinically.
authors.affiliation: Faculdade de Medicina de Lisboa, Cirurgia Cardíaca, Centro do Coração, Hospitais CUF, Lisboa.
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fragata
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Coelho
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Martins
mesh_terms: D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures / Q000009:adverse effects*; D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000453:epidemiology*