Basel Contribution to the EACTS Adult Cardiac Database (ACD)

University Hospital Basel is joining the Adult Cardiac Database (ACD) of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS), an international registry within the EACTS Quality Improvement Programme (QUIP). The ACD enables participating centres to benchmark the outcomes of adult cardiac surgery against hospitals across Europe and to identify opportunities for quality improvement.

Our department contributes anonymised data from more than 10,000 cardiac surgical procedures performed in Basel since 2008, covering preoperative risk factors, operative details, perfusion and myocardial protection, and postoperative outcomes. As most data currently held in the ACD start from 2019, the Basel contribution substantially extends the historical depth of the database. In addition, cases from our robotic cardiac surgery programme will be contributed to the new robotic features of the ACD.

The data are harmonised to EACTS definitions and anonymised in close collaboration with the Data Governance and Data Science team of the Department of Clinical Research, in line with Swiss data protection requirements. Beyond benchmarking, the project strengthens the long-term curation and reuse of our surgical data and opens opportunities for future multicentre, quality-focused research.