The question of how to ensure quality assurance in catheter procedures in children was the topic of this month’s Grand Rounds lecture at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q).
Cardiac catheterisation in infants and children is a medical procedure used to diagnose and treat certain heart conditions. It involves an interventional cardiologist placing a long thin tube into a blood vessel that leads to
the heart.
Dr Ralf Holzer, director, Cardiac Catheterisation and Interventional Therapy, division chief cardiology (acting) at Sidra Medical and Research Centre, told the audience of healthcare professionals at WCM-Q that prior to 2003 there were no standardised processes for reporting outcomes and risk adjustment in cardiac catheterisation.
This began to change when Boston Children’s Hospital started to record data from its own procedures and used this data to compare outcomes between operators. Other institutions joined the initiative and formed the ‘Congenital cardiac catheterisation Project on Outcomes,’ a prospective registry on catheterisation procedures, he said.
Dr Holzer added: “Until the first research paper was released I was unable to tell patients the exact chance of an adverse effect happening, but following that I was able to give patients and families very specific numbers. This meant that families and patients were able to get informed consent.”
According to him, every hospital could begin quality assurance and improvement programmes, simply by collating information on a local level and ensuring it is monitored and shared with the relevant physicians and management.
He also said that the data capture should be consistent but emphasised that quality assurance and continuous quality improvement should not be seen as punitive. Instead it should be seen as a method of allowing individuals and programmes identify potential areas for improvement.