Surgical risk models are statistical models established by reviewing large-volume surgical databases and using patients’ perioperative data on evidenced based principles. Typically, surgical risk models are able to provide individualized risk information preoperatively, including postoperative morbidity and mortality, thus facilitating clinical decisions. On the other hand, with risk adjustment, the models set benchmarks for quality assessment, which enables relatively objective comparisons of surgical approaches within different cohorts. As in recent years risk models for cardiothoracic surgery have been fast developing, this paper goes through some literature to discuss over the application and prospect of these models.