NHS England has released the Review of Children’s Congenital Cardiac Surgery Service at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust report (this document is available on our archived website).

This report is the output of the independent review team that formed part of the first stage of the review into children’s heart surgery at Leeds .  This report looked at systems within the unit and found that there were no immediate issues that would prevent a resumption of surgery.

This report should be read in conjunction with the NICOR Investigation of mortality from paediatric cardiac surgery in England 2009 – 12 (this document is available on our archived website).

This report from the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research, which is part of the University College London,  was commissioned to inform the review. This report reviewed the data, based on further information provided by Leeds Teaching Hospital and found that the mortality rate was within the acceptable range. However, this report was also very critical of the hospital’s data collection, describing ‘major deficiencies’ in the data submitted, which it said could be a measure of ‘organisational culture’.

It is important that both reports are read and considered together.
NHS England welcomes these reports and the reassurance they offer that that the immediate safety concerns raised at the end of March have been addressed in order that the unit could recommence surgery on a phased basis.

This is not the end of the process, and a second stage of the review is underway in which we now need to explore some of the wider issues around how the unit operates as a whole. We hope we will soon be able to give the unit a full clean bill of health beyond this immediate reassurance of safety.

Throughout this process our sole concern has been the safety of patients