Severance Cardiovascular Hospital released its latest clinical competency report, which shows the status of all the treatments and grades performed by the hospital last year, on its homepage Tuesday.

To allow an objective judgment of its figures, the hospital presented major indexes of the Cleveland Clinic in the U.S., which has a world-renowned reputation in the cardiovascular field.

The data included the number of treatments performed in 2017 for each of the cardiac, cardiovascular, and pediatric cardiology, and the mortality and complication rates associated with the procedure. Complications included deaths, stroke, major bleeding, myocardial infarction, and transition to surgery from regular treatment.

The report also included the total number of patients who visited the hospital from 2015 to 2017 and the hospital’s performances in 28 areas of treatments.

Regarding the cardiology department, the data showed that the rate of complications for interventional procedures for cardiovascular and heart disease was higher than that of the Cleveland Clinic, while the mortality rate was lower than the U.S. institution.

The results showed that the Society of Thoracic Surgery (STS) score, which is an index for pre-procedure assessment of surgical risk for heart surgeries, was similar to or lower than that of the Cleveland Clinic in general cardiovascular interventions such as coronary intervention and aortic intervention.

The report showed that predictive mortality rate for patients who underwent pacemaker and defibrillator implantation for the treatment of arrhythmia was zero.

However, the rate of complications, including internal bleeding after surgeries such as coronary artery and aorta, heart valve intervention and atrial fibrillation surgeries, was higher than that of Cleveland Clinic. Deaths and strokes after treatment were also higher when compared to the U.S. hospital.

For cardiovascular surgeries, Severance hospital outperformed the Cleveland Clinic in most related operations with a 30-day mortality rate of 0 percent. However, the data showed that major surgical procedures operated in the hospital had an average complication rate of 10 percent, leaving room for improvement.

The hospital also showed excellent results for pediatric cardiac interventions for adolescent patients and congenital heart disease with a mortality and complication rates of 0 and 1 percent, respectively.

“This report compares the results of an analysis of objective indicators based on national and international criteria with those of overlapping therapeutic areas among the data disclosed by the Cleveland Clinic,” said Professor Koh Young-gook, the primary author of the report.

However, it is difficult to say that the treatment results of Severance Cardiovascular Hospital and Cleveland Clinic were compared on the same basis as the results published on the Cleveland Clinic's website do not include detailed criteria for complications, Koh added.

Severance Cardiovascular Hospital plans to release more objective clinical indicators each year by supplementing future evaluation criteria.

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