Scoring complications after congenital heart surgery: gut feelings versus calculations.

This study constitutes the first reported attempt to quantify observed morbidity after congenital heart surgery. The completed list of complication scores (footnote, Table 1) will be further applied for a longer period. Resulting morbidity scores bear potential to accurately estimate morbidity in connection with congenital heart surgery. The morbidity scores based on observed complications will contribute to revision of the Aristotle complexity score, in the same way as the observed mortality risks [8]. Estimation over time of such morbidity scores can facilitate the assessment of quality of paediatric cardiac surgical programmes with different case-mixes, provided that it will be accepted by the paediatric cardiovascular surgery community.