ArticlePediatric quality & safety
Standardization of Care Reduces Length of Stay for Postoperative Congenital Heart Disease Patients.
Article in Pediatric quality & safety. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
- Achieving Protein Requirements Through Oral Feeding in Children with Congenital Heart Disease: A Narrative Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Geospatial disparities in pediatric heart failure care in China: a multicenter cohort study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Quality Report: Postoperative Guideline Implementation Reduces Length of Stay after Fontan Procedure.Pediatric quality & safetyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Congenital heart disease (CHD), the most common congenital malformation, often requires surgical correction. As surgical mortality rates are low, a common quality marker linked with surgical outcomes is hospital length of stay (LOS). Reduced LOS is associated with better long-term outcomes, reduced hospital-acquired complications, and improved patient-family satisfaction. This project aimed to reduce aggregate median postoperative LOS for four CHD lesions from a baseline of 6.2 days by 10%.
methodsThis single-center study utilized the Institute for Healthcare Improvement model to achieve the project aim. A diuretic wean protocol implemented in April 2018 entailed weaning to a homegoing diuretic regimen upon transfer from the cardiac intensive care unit to the inpatient step-down unit. A discharge milestone checklist implemented in September 2018 contained milestones necessary for discharge and an anticipated date of discharge. Outcome measures included aggregate median postoperative LOS and ∆LOS. Balancing measures included cardiac intensive care unit bounce back, pleural chest tube replacement, and readmission rates.
resultsOur baseline aggregate median postoperative LOS for the lesions studied was 6.2 days. Following diuretic protocol implementation, the aggregate median LOS decreased to 4.4 days. Baseline ∆LOS decreased from 5.5 to 0.42 days. Postoperative cost fell by an average of $11,874. Balancing measures demonstrated no unintended consequences.
conclusionsImplementation of a diuretic wean protocol led to sustained improvement in postoperative LOS, and ∆LOS in a subset of CHD patients with no unintended consequences supporting that standardization of postoperative care is effective for improvement efforts and can reduce overall practice variation.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.