Longitudinal Data Sets in Cardiac Surgery

There is a growing recognition of the importance of longitudinal outcomes after cardiac surgery defining durability of interventions, with an increasing number of publications using a variety of data sources. The purpose of this review is to provide a clinically relevant summary of commonly used longitudinal data sources in cardiac surgery to facilitate broader research use. A group of clinical cardiac surgeons with content expertise in longitudinal data identified the commonly used and high-quality data sources. An overview is provided for each data source as as specific strengths and limitations unique to the clinical interpretation of studies from each data set.