How to understand how risky is heart surgery? Risk-adjusted mortality is a concept of relative risk of particular surgery at particular hospital or by specific surgeon. Eminent cardiac surgeon helps to understand how to look at risks of heart surgery. Open heart surgery risks for elderly. Dr. Lawrence H. Cohn, MD. Risk adjusted mortality concept helps to understand actual risks of surgery compared with expected risks. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. What are odds of dying during open heart surgery? What are complications of open heart surgery? Open heart surgery risks. How high are chances of survival after open heart surgery? Especially after valvular heart disease surgery? Pioneering cardiac surgeon explains what is risk-adjusted mortality. Dr. Lawrence H. Cohn, MD. Video interview with leading expert in cardiac surgery. Second opinion confirms that heart disease diagnosis is correct and complete. Second opinion helps to choose the best treatment for coronary artery disease. Get second opinion on coronary artery disease and mitral valve disease and be confident that your surgical treatment is the best. Open heart surgery outcomes. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. You have already mentioned the concept of "risk adjustment of mortality and morbidity". This seems to be a crucial metric. A lot of patients and potential heart surgery patients get confused. Could you please help to understand the concept of "risk adjusted mortality and morbidity"? 1234 (Cardiac Surgeon, Harvard Medical School). Dr. Lawrence H. Cohn, MD. Risk-adjusted morbidity and mortality is not something that the average patient is going to understand. There is reporting from every hospital that is doing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The reports contain expected and observed mortality data. For some hospitals the expected mortality is very high. Because you are operating on a lot of patients in shock. Because of heart attack or other heart problem. You are doing much better than expected mortality for these difficult patients. That means you are very good. On the other hand, some hospitals are doing a lot mostly elective patients. These are planned surgeries on patients in better state of health. These surgeries have lower risk and mortality is risk-adjusted. Dr. Lawrence H. Cohn, MD. So if this hospital has a higher mortality than what is expected, that says the hospital is not doing a very good job. So you don't want to go to such hospital for your surgery. 1234 Dr. Anton Titov, MD. Ultimately, it is an observed mortality vs. the expected mortality. That depends on how severely ill the patients are. 1234 Yes, that's correct, exactly. Open heart surgery risks. How to understand risk of dying during heart surgery. What is risk adjusted mortality? Odds of dying after valvular heart surgery?