Boost for UK over heart surgery performance

The UK is outperforming most of Europe when it comes to survival rates from heart bypass operations, according to an international audit. Across Europe, 2.4% of patients on average die following a bypass.

This compared with 2.2% in Scotland, 1.8% in England and just 1.1% in Wales, the study found. The European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery looked at data from more than a million operations in 23 countries.

A leading heart surgeon said the decision to collect data on hospital performance had helped cut mortality by 50% in five years. This is the first ever comparative study of heart operations across the continent, and the NHS was one of the most enthusiastic participants, contributing a large slice of the total data used.

However, a number of countries including France, Denmark, The Netherlands, Austria and the Czech Republic did not participate.