Databases in tracheal diseases

Abstract

During the last two decades surgery has considerably changed not only under the pressure of technological advances but also for the wide dissemination of a clinical practice based on the data driven approach. In fact, surgeons became increasingly used to analyze and to review their own result in order to optimize the subsequent clinical management with the aim of offering a better quality of care to their patients. Obviously, this virtuous process must be founded on reliable and comprehensive collections of clinical data. The detailed storage of information about patients, treatments and results is even more important for those categories of disease that are less common and where the standardization of practice is poor. Tracheal diseases submitted to surgical treatment are indeed rare and the description of different aspect of clinical practice is fragmented within the scientific literature. For this reason, the needs exist of a standardized and shared data repository with a multi-institutional and international connotation that could represent a benchmark for collecting data about tracheal diseases surgery and at the same time a valuable instrument for improving the quality of care in this field.