Postoperative infections contribute to mortality and morbidity after congenital heart surgery. Younger, more complex patients are at particular risk. Quality improvement targeted at infection risk may reduce morbidity and mortality in the developing world.

Background:The International Quality Improvement Collaborative (IQIC) for Congenital Heart Surgery in Developing Countries was initiated to decrease mortality and major complications after congenital heart surgery in the developing world.Objective:We sought to assess the impact of IQIC on postoperative outcomes after congenital heart surgery at our institution.Methods:The key components of the IQIC program included creation of a robust worldwide database on key outcome measures and nurse education on quality driven best practices using telemedicine platforms. We evaluated 1702 consecutive patients ≤18 years undergoing congenital heart surgery in our institute from January 2010-December 2012 using the IQIC database. Preoperative variables included age, gender, weight at surgery and surgical complexity as per the RACHS-1 model. The outcome variables included, in- hospital mortality, duration of ventilation, intensive care unit (ICU) stay, bacterial sepsis and surgical site infection.Results:The 1702 patients included 771(45.3%) females. The median age was 8 months (0.03-216) and the median weight was 6.1Kg (1-100). The overall in-hospital mortality was 3.1%, Over the three years there was a significant decline in bacterial sepsis (from 15.1%, to 9.6%, P < 0.001), surgical site infection (11.1% to 2.4%, P < 0.001) and duration of ICU stay from 114(8-999) hours to 72 (18-999) hours (P < 0.001) The decline in mortality from (4.3% to 2.2%) did not reach statistical significance.Conclusions:The inclusion of our institution in the IQIC program was associated with improvement in key outcome measures following congenital heart surgery over a three year period.

Introduction:Bacillus cereus is a gram positive bacilli found commonly in the soil and environment. It is a bacteria rarely associated with endocarditis.Case History:Intravenous drug abuse, presence of valvular defects, pacemakers, immunodeficiency are some of the known risk factors for B.cereus endocarditis. We present here a case series of two patients with B.cereus endocarditis along with a review of the literature.Conclusion:This is the first report of B.cereus endocarditis from India to the best of our knowledge.