The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery Database: 2018 Update on Research: Outcomes Analysis, Quality Improvement, and Patient Safety.

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Database (ACSD) is an international voluntary registry that provides adult cardiac surgery programs with risk-adjusted outcome reports for quality improvement. With more than 6,300,000 procedural records in adult cardiac surgery, the ACSD has proven to be a leading instrument for clinical outcomes research. The ACSD generated numerous major original contributions that were either published or accepted for publication in 2017. These works significantly contributed to the practice of adult cardiac surgery through outcome measurement and quality improvement. This paper summarizes the recent ACSD contributions to the literature.