New league tables have identified two Sussex surgeons as among the very best in the country.

Hany Hafez and Syed Yusuf are two of just seven vascular surgeons who have performed more than 100 operations but have never seen a single patient die in theatre.

They operate on blood vessels in the body, such as arteries and veins.
 

Mr Yusuf, who is employed by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, has carried out 115 operations to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms in the past five years.
Mr Hafez, who is based at Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, has carried out 101.

The performance league tables, published on the NHS Choices website for the first time, aim to show patients how well consultants across England perform against each other.

Patients can see the number of times a surgeon has carried out a procedure, their mortality rates and whether or not they are performing within the expected range.
 

Vascular and cardiac surgery have been the first to be published.

All vascular and cardiac surgeons working in Sussex had death rates that within the normal range.

People have been urged to treat the data with caution because surgeons who carry out fewer operations may appear to have high mortality rates, despite the actual number of deaths being low.

Brighton and Sussex medical director Steve Holmberg said: “The key to ensuring that this initiative ultimately results in better outcomes for patients is what we do with this data now.

“It cannot be cited in isolation as defining how well or not any one service or individual consultant is performing.

“But if used alongside all the other information and evidence available at an individual hospital, local health economy and national level, it can and will help us understand what we are doing well and where we need to look more closely and work differently to potentially make improvements.”

Western Sussex Hospitals medical director Phillip Barnes said: “We welcome the publication of these new figures, and hope that they can help to drive improvements in the NHS.

“Mortality rates for an individual surgeon are affected by the particu lar mix of patients who they treat, and so the figures that have been published are not “risk adjusted”.

“They cannot, and should not, be used to compare individual surgeons.”

Details on other specialities will emerge in the coming months.