Duke is consistently ranked among the top cardiology and heart surgery programs in the U.S. by U.S. News and World Report.
Surgical Volumes and Outcomes
Our division surpasses all national minimum-volume recommendations and provides our patients with excellent outcomes.
Highlights:
- With more than 1,000 open-heart procedures annually, Duke’s volumes far exceed those suggested by national guidelines -- and survival rates consistently exceed the Society of Thoracic Surgeons benchmarks.
- The Duke lung and heart-lung transplant program was established in 1992 and is the Southeast’s largest lung transplant program.
- Over 2,500 patients have received a lung transplant at Duke.
- The top-ranked Duke heart transplant program has performed more than 1,900 cardiac transplant procedures in both adults and children since 1985, with excellent outcomes. The average patient survival at one year is 88.7 percent for heart transplant patients at Duke, compared to 86.9 percent nationally.
- Our surgeons have implanted more than 1,000 durable LVADs since 2003, when they implanted North Carolina's first VAD used as a destination therapy. (This number includes both bridge-to-transplant and permanent-therapy procedures.)
- Duke operates one of the nation's largest services for open aortic surgeries and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest for aortic-arch aneurysms.
- Duke is one of the only U.S. centers using online central nervous system (CNS) monitoring with EEG and evoked potentials to protect the CNS during aortic arch repair.
- Duke's pediatric heart-transplant program is North Carolina's largest.