National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA)

Welcome to the homepage of the National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA). 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.

National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA)

The 2026 Interim Summary NACSA report looks at all procedures undertaken in NHS cardiac surgery centres, as well as three private hospitals and one from the Republic of Ireland.  The data covers the period between 1 April – 30 September 2025. 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. Scotland has chosen to audit its own data since 2020/21, so the three Scottish hospitals no longer contribute to NACSA. Information from the Scottish Cardiac Audit Programme can be found via their website. 

The report is presented as a series of interactive slides allowing readers to see the main trends and metrics more easily.  It is also designed to allow users to select and explore data points that interest them. Hospital level data are to be found in the interactive version.

2026 Interim Summary Report Key findings:

National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA): waiting times for elective cardiac surgery have fallen over the last year. Submission numbers were around 90% of those expected for the period, with relative proportions of elective versus urgent versus emergency cases unchanged. Waiting times for elective cardiac surgery increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, fell afterwards but then increased between 2022 and 2024. After a peak in Q2 2023/24, there has been a gradual fall in waiting times for surgery, to just over 100 days in Q1/Q2 2025/26. Conversely, waiting times for urgent cardiac surgery fell during the pandemic but then increased over the next few years. Average waits for urgent surgery in Q1/Q2 2025/26 in England were 12-13 days but ranged from 8-30 days in different NHS hospitals. Complication rates after cardiac surgery have remained low.

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

Clinical lead: Dr Uday Trivedi

Contact email: nicor.auditenquiries@nhs.net