Bulletin Spring‧Summer 2007

41 News in Brief Air Pollution Increases Hospital Admissions of Pulmonary Disease Sufferers S ignificant associations were found between hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and air pollutants, especially in the cold season. The study, carried out by the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, and the Department o f Commun i t y a nd F ami l y Medicine, was published in the journal THORAX . The study assessed the relationship between the levels of ambient air pollutants and hospitalization rate due to COPD in Hong Kong. Assuring Quality in Cardiac Surgery by Surgical Audit Database T he Department of surgery initiates setting up a specially designed high-end surgical audit database to capture complete details of treatment and follow-up care for every patient undergoing surgery in the cardiac units of the Prince of Wales Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and Grantham Hospital. An automatic module regularly analyzes the complex data on each surgical case and generates customized reports as required. Outcomes for patients and overall trends can then be progressively benchmarked against today’s rapidly evolving international standards for cardiac surgery. Surgeons and managers can readily track progress on such key indicators as morbidity (complications arising from surgery) and mortality (death within 30 days of an operation), and can also systematically assess other relevant results, studying in detail the quality of each element of a patient’s entire hospital stay. The outcomes reveal how well-agreed standards are being met, enabling intervention and improvement of every process and procedure involved in delivering first-class surgical care for Hong Kong patients.