Towards efficient cardiac surgery

Cardiac surgery in its current form is a complex and labour-intensive pursuit within the medical profession. Efficiency and effectiveness are important to cost management and optimisation is imperative given the increasing age of patients. This dissertation identifies a number of logistical measures that can help. For example, a patient group can be selected that requires fewer ICU beds and hospital staff and fewer bags of donor blood. If complications arise, such as kidney dialysis, age plays a crucial role, as the recovery and survival rate of patients aged 75 and older is virtually zero. Finally, this dissertation describes relatively cheap and simple laboratory tests that can help determine the survival rate of patients following cardiac surgery. Lactic acid and cholesterol tests in the ICU can be used to supplement existing risk analyses before surgery.