Abstract

BORRACCI, Raúl A.  and  RUBIO, Miguel. Increase in the Risk of Perioperative Mortality in Cardiac Surgery: Are We Actually Operating Higher Risk Patients?. Rev. argent. cardiol. [online]. 2006, vol.74, n.4, pp.229-230. ISSN 1850-3748.

International reports have shown that the average mortality risk of patients (p) undergoing heart surgery has been increasing throughout time. However, most surveys have focused on average increase in risk instead of reporting real frequency distribution according to risk groups. The aim of this report was to evaluate whether there is currently an increased mortality risk for cardiac surgery in our country compared to a decade ago, based not only on the average variation but also on the relative distribution of risk groups. Parsonnet's risk score classification was used to compare two series of p undergoing cardiac surgery: 464 p operated between 1993 and 1995 versus 502 p operated between 2004 and 2005. Relative frequency distribution analysis showed an increased proportion of patients in the higher risk group during 2004-5 (8 to 13%, p<.05) and a paradoxical increase in low risk cases (18 to 28%, p<.05) for the same period. Because of these two opposite changes, the average risk score was not significantly different between the two series of p (8.2 versus 9.2, p=NS).

Keywords : Cardiac surgery; Risk stratification.