sts.org

STS advocates on policy issues that affect cardiothoracic surgery practice, and it communicates those positions through channels such as the presidential update. One documented example is its response to the final National Coverage Determination issued by CMS for transcatheter aortic valve replacement, where the Society expressed support for multidisciplinary, heart team-based care. That advocacy is paired with member-facing programs such as the STS Compensation Survey and the STS Annual Meeting, which appear alongside policy news in the Society's updates.

What STS Advocacy Covers

Based on the Society's own update content, STS advocacy work centers on policy decisions that shape how cardiothoracic surgeons deliver care. The example given is CMS coverage policy for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). In that case, STS's stated position supported multidisciplinary, heart team-based care.

That framing matters because coverage determinations can influence which care models hospitals and surgeons use. When STS takes a position on a National Coverage Determination, it is weighing in on the conditions under which a procedure is covered and how care teams are structured around it.

How STS Communicates Advocacy Positions

STS publishes advocacy and policy news through its presidential updates. In the update referenced on the site, Vinay Badhwar, MD, addresses the CMS final National Coverage Determination for TAVR and the Society's support for heart team-based care. The same update also points members to the 2026 STS Compensation Survey and registration for the 63rd STS Annual Meeting.

This means advocacy news is not isolated. It is delivered alongside practical member items, so readers encounter policy positions in the same place they find survey participation and meeting registration.

What Else Appears Alongside Advocacy

The STS homepage groups several member-facing items with its advocacy and policy updates. These are not advocacy activities themselves, but they show the context in which STS shares policy news.

The EWCTS Awards are notable here because they explicitly list advocacy as one of the areas they celebrate, alongside clinical practice, leadership, and mentorship.

How to Follow STS Advocacy

If you want to track STS advocacy positions, the presidential update is the channel described on the site. It carries policy statements, such as the position on the CMS TAVR coverage determination, and links to related member programs.

For a broader view of STS resources, the site also points to data and research initiatives, public reporting of institutional performance and national benchmarks, current research projects, data access programs, and early career resources. These sit alongside the advocacy and compensation content rather than replacing it.

Where This Leaves You

STS advocacy, as documented on sts.org, focuses on policy decisions that affect cardiothoracic surgery practice, with the CMS TAVR coverage determination and heart team-based care as the concrete example. The Society shares these positions through presidential updates and pairs them with member programs like the compensation survey and annual meeting. If your interest is specifically in policy, the presidential update is the place to look; if you want the wider set of member resources, the site's data, research, and career sections cover that ground.

sts.org is the website of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, and its main value for practicing cardiothoracic surgeons is access to clinical registries, quality-improvement data, risk calculators, research programs, and career-stage resources. The site is aimed at CT surgeons and care teams rather than patients, and the resources below are the ones most likely to be useful in practice, research, or career planning.

Clinical data and quality improvement

The centerpiece is the STS National Database, described on the site as the gold standard for clinical registries and quality improvement. Related entry points include:

• Public Reporting — institutional performance and national benchmarks for survival, complications, and other measures.
• Data Access Programs — STS data made available for quality-improvement initiatives, clinical trials, and research.
• Current Projects — ongoing research from programs funded by STS.

If your goal is benchmarking your own outcomes or contributing to a registry, the National Database and Public Reporting sections are the places to start. If your goal is using STS data for a study or trial, the Data Access Programs page is the relevant route.

Practical clinical tools

The site hosts Risk Calculators that estimate a patient's risk of mortality and morbidities for common surgeries. These are the kind of tool you would reach for during pre-operative discussion or documentation, using patient variables as inputs to produce a risk estimate.

Career-stage and member resources

STS organizes some content by career stage rather than by clinical topic:

• Early Career Resources — guidance aimed at surgeons earlier in practice.
• Member Voices — first-person commentary from surgeon members. One example on the site, from Melanie Subramanian, MD, MPHS, argues that supportive colleagues and mentors affect long-term job satisfaction more than salary alone.
• STS Surgeon Compensation Survey — a survey intended to help U.S.-based CT surgeons understand their market value by specialty, practice type, career stage, and geography. Participation is solicited through the site.

Education, advocacy, and meetings

• Annual Meeting — the 63rd STS Annual Meeting is promoted on the homepage, with early bird discounts stated as available until Nov. 2, 2026.
• Advocacy updates — presidential updates cover policy positions. One highlighted update, from Vinay Badhwar, MD, addresses the final CMS National Coverage Determination for transcatheter aortic valve replacement and the Society's support for multidisciplinary, heart team–based care.
• Awards — the 2027 Nina Starr Braunwald Extraordinary Women in Cardiothoracic Surgery (EWCTS) Awards recognize achievements in clinical practice, leadership, mentorship, and advocacy by women in the specialty.

Specialty content worth noting

The site also surfaces focused clinical material, such as a video summarizing a study of patients in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database who underwent operative repair of a postinfarct ventricular septal defect (PIVSD) between 2014 and 2022. The accompanying description notes that ECLS therapies can provide hemodynamic stabilization and may allow definitive surgical repair to be delayed.

How to decide where to go

Access conditions, membership requirements, and any fees for specific programs are not stated in the material available here, so check the individual program page before assuming a resource is open or free.

The STS Surgeon Compensation Survey is a data-collection effort by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) that asks U.S.-based cardiothoracic surgeons to report their compensation so the specialty can understand its market value. According to STS, the survey is designed to help U.S.-based CT surgeons understand their value in the market specific to specialty, practice, career stage, and geography. It is aimed at surgeons practicing in the United States, and participation is framed as a member activity — the current cycle is promoted to STS members and surgeon members through the Society's updates.

What the survey is for

The stated purpose is market understanding rather than individual negotiation advice. STS describes the survey as a way for U.S.-based CT surgeons to see how compensation relates to four variables:

• Specialty — the type of cardiothoracic work performed
• Practice — the practice setting or model
• Career stage — where a surgeon sits in their career, from early career onward
• Geography — the region where the surgeon practices

That structure matters because it means results are meant to be read in slices, not as a single national number. A surgeon comparing an offer or an internal pay decision gets more use from the specialty-plus-career-stage-plus-region view than from an average across all CT surgeons.

Who is asked to participate

The survey is directed at U.S.-based cardiothoracic surgeons. STS promotes it through its member communications, including the presidential update from Vinay Badhwar, MD, which encourages participation in the 2026 STS Compensation Survey. The Society also maintains an early career resources area, which is relevant because career stage is one of the survey's breakdowns and early career surgeons are a group for whom compensation benchmarking tends to matter most.

Participation is presented as a contribution to the field: the more surgeons who respond, the more usable the specialty-, practice-, career-stage-, and geography-level results become.

How to take part

STS does not publish a standalone public sign-up page in the material available here; the survey is surfaced through the Society's member updates and the "STS Surgeon Compensation Survey" item on its site. The practical path is:

1. Check STS member communications. The survey is announced in the presidential update and related Society updates, which is where the current cycle and its timing appear.
2. Use the survey entry point on sts.org. The "STS Surgeon Compensation Survey" listing on the site is the direct route to the survey itself.
3. Complete the survey as a U.S.-based CT surgeon. The call is explicitly for U.S.-based CT surgeons; the questions are organized around specialty, practice, career stage, and geography.
4. Watch for the results. The stated output is a compensation reference for the specialty, which is what makes the reporting worth the time.

If you are not a member or not practicing in the U.S., the material here does not describe an alternative route, so the member update channel is the reliable way to confirm eligibility and timing for a given cycle.

What it is not

The survey is not a salary calculator, a contract-review service, or a job board. It collects compensation data and reports it by segment; it does not, based on the available material, produce an individualized recommendation for what a specific surgeon should be paid. For a surgeon weighing an offer, the survey is best treated as one input alongside the STS risk calculators and other clinical and professional resources the Society provides.

Why it exists alongside the rest of STS

STS runs the survey within a broader set of data and quality programs, including the STS National Database, public reporting of institutional performance, and data access programs for quality improvement and research. The compensation survey follows the same logic in a different domain: gather structured data from the specialty, then return benchmarks that members can act on. For early career surgeons in particular, that benchmark is the difference between negotiating from a general impression of the market and negotiating from numbers broken down by specialty, practice, career stage, and geography.

STS stands for The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, a professional medical society for cardiothoracic surgeons. Its website, sts.org, is a membership and professional-resource hub rather than a consumer health or e-commerce site. It is most useful if you are a cardiothoracic surgeon, a surgeon in training, or someone working with the specialty who needs clinical registries, risk calculators, research data, advocacy updates, or annual meeting information. If you are a patient looking for treatment advice or a place to buy medical products, this is not the right destination.

Who the site is for

The content is built around the professional practice of cardiothoracic surgery. The homepage surfaces material such as:

• Advocacy and policy updates — for example, a presidential update addressing the CMS National Coverage Determination for transcatheter aortic valve replacement and the Society's support for multidisciplinary, heart team-based care.
• Compensation benchmarking — the STS Surgeon Compensation Survey, which asks U.S.-based CT surgeons to report their value by specialty, practice type, career stage, and geography.
• Annual Meeting registration — the 63rd STS Annual Meeting, with early bird discounts noted as available until Nov. 2, 2026.
• Awards — such as the 2027 Nina Starr Braunwald Extraordinary Women in Cardiothoracic Surgery (EWCTS) Awards, recognizing achievements in clinical practice, leadership, mentorship, and advocacy.
• Clinical video content — for example, a summary of findings from a study of patients in the STS Adult Cardiac Surgery Database who underwent operative repair of a postinfarct ventricular septal defect (PIVSD) from 2014 to 2022, discussing extracorporeal life support as an option for hemodynamic stabilization.

What resources the site provides

The site organizes its professional tools into a few clear areas:

How to decide whether to use it

Use sts.org if you need one of the following:

• Registry or benchmark data for quality improvement, research, or comparing institutional performance.
• A risk calculator to estimate mortality and morbidity risk for common cardiothoracic surgeries.
• Policy and advocacy context on issues affecting the specialty, such as coverage decisions.
• Meeting, award, or survey participation tied to the Society's professional community.

Look elsewhere if you want patient-facing medical information, general health advice, or products to purchase. The site's own framing — member voices, surgeon compensation, database research, and annual meeting registration — makes clear that its audience is the profession, not the public.

One practical note on the compensation survey: it is explicitly aimed at U.S.-based CT surgeons and asks for detail by specialty, practice, career stage, and geography, so it is not a general salary reference for other roles or countries.

Registration for the STS Annual Meeting is handled through the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) website at sts.org. According to the STS homepage, the 63rd STS Annual Meeting is open for registration, and early bird discounts are available until Nov. 2, 2026. If you want the lowest rate, register before that date; if you are still deciding, you can still register afterward, but the early bird pricing will no longer apply.

What the STS Annual Meeting Is

The STS Annual Meeting is described on the site as "the premier meeting in cardiothoracic surgery." It is organized by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the professional body behind the STS National Database and other quality and research programs. The homepage lists the 63rd Annual Meeting as a current highlight alongside advocacy updates and the STS Surgeon Compensation Survey.

How to Register

The STS homepage provides a registration entry point for the 63rd Annual Meeting. The general flow is:

1. Go to sts.org.
2. Find the Annual Meeting registration link in the site's updates or highlights section.
3. Complete the registration process through the STS site.

The homepage confirms that registration is open and that early bird discounts are available until Nov. 2, 2026. It does not list specific registration fees, membership requirements, or a step-by-step form on the page itself, so check the registration page for current pricing and any member versus non-member rates.

Key Details to Note

Common Questions

Do I need to be an STS member to register? The homepage does not state a membership requirement. Confirm this on the registration page, since member and non-member rates often differ.

Is there a discount? Yes — early bird discounts are available until Nov. 2, 2026. Registering before that date is the way to secure the lower rate.

Where do I get the latest details? The STS homepage and its Annual Meeting registration link are the source for current deadlines and pricing. Details such as the full program, venue, and continuing education information are not included in the homepage excerpt, so consult the meeting pages directly.

Related STS Resources

The same homepage highlights other items that may be relevant if you are attending or planning around the meeting:

• STS Surgeon Compensation Survey — open for U.S.-based cardiothoracic surgeons, covering specialty, practice, career stage, and geography.
• STS National Database — clinical registries and quality improvement resources.
• Risk Calculators — tools to estimate patient risk of mortality and morbidities for common surgeries.
• Early Career Resources — guidance for surgeons earlier in their careers.

For registration itself, the essential action is simple: visit sts.org, open the 63rd STS Annual Meeting registration link, and complete it before Nov. 2, 2026 if you want the early bird rate.