Oak Lawn, Ill. – For the sixth reporting period in a row, Advocate Christ Medical Center has earned the highest rating – three stars – from the Chicago-based Society of Thoracic Surgeons for the quality of the medical center’s adult open heart surgery, specifically its achieved outcomes in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).
Stars are awarded on the basis of a composite score that the Society of Thoracic Surgeons calculates using a combination of 11 quality measures divided into several broad categories, including risk-adjusted morbidity and mortality. A hospital earns three stars if the numbers show that the institution is likely (99 percent probability) to perform at an above-average level. Only about 10 percent to 15 percent of hospitals participating in the Society’s database achieve three stars.
“To have merited the highest national rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons six times in a row is truly a testament to the quality of our entire cardiothoracic team at Christ Medical Center,” said Pat Pappas, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon and chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the medical center.
Coronary artery bypass graft surgery involves using a section of another blood vessel – oftentimes, one of the arteries taken from the underside of the patient’s chest wall – to bypass the portion of a coronary artery that has become blocked or severely narrowed due to coronary artery disease. One end of the graft is attached above the blockage and the other below it; the blood is rerouted through the graft so that it can reach the heart muscle easily.
Symptoms of coronary artery disease, which decreases blood flow to the heart, include chest pain, fatigue, shortness of breath and abnormal heart rhythms.
In 2012, Advocate Christ Medical Center’s Heart and Vascular Institute teams performed 976 adult open heart surgeries, making the Institute one of Illinois’ busiest and most experienced heart centers.
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About Advocate Christ Medical Center
Advocate Christ Medical Center is part of Advocate Health Care, which is one of the nation’s leading health care networks. A not-for-profit, 694-bed, premier teaching institution with more than 1,000 affiliated physicians, Christ Medical Center is a leader in health care and one of the major referral hospitals in the Midwest in a number of specialties, including cardiovascular services, heart and kidney transplantation, neurosciences, oncology, orthopedics and women’s health. The hospital also has one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in Illinois providing emergency care for more than 90,000 patient visits annually and is a leader in breakthrough technologies, including eICU® (electronic intensive care unit) monitoring, robotic da Vinci Surgery System® and CyberKnife® Radiosurgery. In both 2012 and 2013, the medical center was named to the Truven Health 100 Top Hospitals®, while U.S. News & World Report ranked the medical center among the nation’s leading providers for cardiology and heart surgery and for geriatric medicine and ranked it fourth overall among hospitals in the state of Illinois. The hospital is also recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) as a Magnet Center. Magnet status represents the highest honor in the nursing profession. To obtain more information or to visit our newsroom, log on to: www.advocatehealth.com/christ.