New tool can help clinicians calculate risk of surgery in heart patients

A new online tool is designed to help clinicians calculate the risk associated with mitral valve repair surgery in patients with heart disease. 

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) has developed and launched a new risk calculator to estimate the risk of mitral valve repair for patients with mitral valve prolapse and degenerative primary mitral regurgitation (primary MR).

STS’s Risk Calculator for Surgical Repair of Primary Mitral Regurgitation enables providers to enter a patient’s demographics, risk factors such as smoking and diabetes, lab results, and details about their heart disease and surgical history.

The Calculator then produces a result that provides statistically robust objective estimates of the patient’s individual risk for death or surgical complications.

“Risk estimation for surgical intervention is an essential component of a heart team’s shared decision-making process,” said STS President Thomas MacGillivray, MD.

“This important new STS Risk Calculator will make a significant difference for patients with mitral valve prolapse and regurgitation as it will give their cardiologists and surgeons an objective method to help determine the optimal course of treatment tailored to the individual.”

The STS National Database accounts for over 97 per cent of all heart operations performed in the United States. The new calculator utilises contemporary and procedure-specific data from the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database that are most representative of the surgeries being performed today.

“Recently published studies demonstrated that in the vast majority of patients with primary MR due to mitral valve prolapse, the risk of mortality associated with mitral valve repair surgery is less than one per cent. These new data, specific for these patients, has informed the new STS risk calculator,” Dr MacGillivray said.

STS is a global leader in risk model development as a means to improve quality and patient care. Risk calculators, such as this new tool for primary MR, help inform multidisciplinary medical providers as they choose the optimal care for their patients.

The STS National Database is one of largest clinical registries in healthcare, including more than eight million records.