Quality control in cardiovascular surgery: a new paradigm.

The objective is to write a literature review of the relevant information related to quality control in cardiovascular surgery. The authors have studied several parameters to allow quality control in cardiovascular surgery: 1. Construction of a database as complete as possible to the similar ones of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery; 2. To create a surgical risk model like the Euroscore; 3. To make an analysis of the different reasons for a poor surgical outcomes and try to correct them; 4. To study the human factor as an important element to the surgical outcome and discuss methods to avoid erros in an action similar to the ones used in aviation. Enabling a tight control of quality in cardiovascular surgery it is possible to obtain a major improvement in surgical outcomes.