An international study on pediatric cardiac surgery found outstanding results at the Costa Rican National Children’s Hospital, said the Costa Rican Social Security Agency (CCSS) which runs the country’s public healthcare system.

The study looked at in 55 hospitals worldwide and was carried out by the Boston Children’s Hospital in partnership with Harvard University.

The findings showed that from January to December 2016, the Costa Rican Children’s Hospital performed 227 pediatric cardiac surgeries, and that during that period, the post-operative mortality was lower than the average of the 55 centers evaluated.

The results were presented last week by María Eugenia Villalta Bonilla, medical manager of the CCSS, Olga Arguedas Arguedas, director of the Costa Rican Children’s Hospital, and the cardiac specialist team at the hospital.

Villalta Bonilla said that the findings are significant for the hospital, but most importantly for the welfare granted to the families of these children, who were able to find a solution to their children’s life-threatening heart problems.

She emphasized that the results are a reflection of an effort by the hospital in recent years to decrease mortality from heart surgeries. This has involved increasing specialists’ training, and incorporating advice from the world’s best pediatric cardiac surgery centers.

The mortality rate at the Costa Rican Children’s Hospital for pediatric cardiac surgery patients during January – December 2016 was 1.3 percent, which was lower than the average mortality found at all the centers.

Also noted in the study was the substantial reduction in complications such as bleeding and infection in heart surgery patients. Last year, only two pediatric heart patients out of the hospital’s 227 cases required a second surgical intervention.

The hospital has also managed to reduce the amount of time heart surgery patients stay in ICU to 69 hours, and the time patients spend using mechanical ventilation down to 20 hours.