National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA)

Medic in white coat holding digital heart

Home » National Cardiac Audit Programme » National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA)

National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA) icon

The National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA) collects data on all major heart operations carried out in NHS hospitals and a selection of private hospitals throughout the UK.

What is Adult Cardiac Surgery?

Adult Cardiac Surgery includes all procedures performed on patients aged 18 or over that involve the heart or structures attached to the heart. For the purposes of this Audit we report on operations that involve surgically opening the chest wall and usually the pericardium (the sac around the heart). The most common of these procedures are: Coronary Artery Bypass Grafts (CABG), Valve surgery, operations on the Thoracic Aorta, or a combination of these.

Procedures on the heart performed with catheters (tubes inserted via arteries or veins to access the heart) are usually performed by interventional cardiologists rather than surgeons. These are included in several other national audits overseen by NICOR and are therefore not included here.

Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NASCA)

The 2023 NACSA looks at all procedures undertaken in NHS cardiac surgery centres in the UK, as well as six private hospitals and one from the Republic of Ireland over a three year period, between 1st April 2019 to 31st March 2022.

This provides an overview of the state of cardiac surgery in the UK during this timeframe (such as activity and trends), as well as reporting on several Quality measures.

The data are complete for all NHS work in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  Scotland has chosen to audit its own data since 2020/21, so the three Scottish units no longer contribute to NACSA. Data is missing from three private providers that chose to not take part during the last three years (2019/22).

To prevent the main report becoming too lengthy some of the data is included within a separate Appendix. This contains many supplementary tables and graphs not within the main report.

Previous reports for Adult Cardiac Surgery (NASCA) are available to download via the Previous reports page.

Project Manager: Samuel Perwaiz

Project Coordinator: Jane Kerr

Contact email: nicor.auditenquiries@nhs.net