[Japan Cardiovascular Surgery Database: past and future]

The Japan Cardiovascular Surgery Database (JCVSD) was established in 2000 to contribute to quality improvement in cardiovascular surgery nationwide. Data are entered via the Internet, and variables were imported from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Database of North America. At present, the number of participating hospitals exceeds 500, and the cumulative number of data entries exceeds 220,000. In 2008, a risk model was created from this large database, and a risk calculator, JapanSCORE, was launched. JapanSCORE assists not only cardiac surgeons but also cardiologists and other physicians to determine the expected mortality risk of a specific patient instantly via the Internet. The JCVSD has three ad hoc committees: the Variable Specification Committee; Site Visit Committee; and Data Access Committee. The Variable Specification Committee responds to questions from participating surgeons regarding database variables and definitions, and an FAQ section was developed based on those queries. The Site Visit Committee visits a number of hospitals monthly for auditing. The Data Access Committee handles applications submitted for data analysis usage from participating hospitals. Based on those data analyses, more than 20 frequently cited papers have been published in international medical journals. Recently, the JCVSD has been linked with the board certification system in the field of cardiovascular medicine, in which almost all hospitals in Japan participate, and it was used for board certification in 2013 for the first time.