The Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society—Society of Thoracic Surgeons Cardiac Anesthesia Database Collaboration

Multi-institutional databases and registries have proliferated over the last decade in all specialties of medicine. They may be especially helpful in low-frequency/high-acuity fields such as pediatric and congenital heart diseases. The Society of Thoracic Surgeon’s Congenital Heart Surgery Database (STSCHSD) is the largest single data set for the congenital heart disease population and includes contemporaneous data from over 120 programs in the United States (and several outside of the United States), capturing greater than 98% of the congenital cardiac surgical procedures in the United States. In 2010, the Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society partnered with the STSCHSD to incorporate anesthesia-related elements into the data set. Voluntary site participation in the anesthesia data has grown steadily. Currently, over 60 sites performing more than 60% of cardiac bypass procedures in the STSCHSD are submitting anesthesia data annually into the STSCHSD. Anesthesia data include perioperative medication usage, modalities for hemodynamic and neurologic monitoring, blood product, antifibrinolytic and procoagulant use, and anesthesia-related adverse events. This special article provides a descriptive summary of relevant findings to date, reflecting the wide variety in anesthesia practice patterns present among institutions and illustrates the functionality of a multisite registry in pediatric cardiac anesthesia which can be utilized both locally and nationally.