Thoracic and cardiovascular surgeries in Japan during 2018

Survey abstractAll data pertaining to cardiovascular and thoracic surgeries were obtained from the NCD, whereas data regarding esophageal surgery were collected from a survey questionnaire derived from the Japanese Association for Thoracic Surgery documentation. This is because NCD information regarding esophageal surgery does not include non-surgical cases (i.e., patients with adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation only).Given the changes in data collection related to cardiovascular surgery [initially self-reported using questionnaire sheets in each participating institution up to 2014, followed by downloading of an automatic package from the Japanese Cardiovascular Surgery Database (JCVSD), a cardiovascular subsection of the NCD], response rates were unavailable and were therefore not indicated in the cardiovascular surgery category (Table 1). Additionally, the number of institutions (based on surgery count) was not calculated in the cardiovascular surgery category (Table 2).Table 1 Number of institutions involved in the surveyFull size tableTable 2 Categories subclassified according to the number of operations performedFull size table