Sudden cardiac arrest in morbidly obese surgical patients unexplained after autopsy

Sixty sudden and unexpected lethal cardiac arrests, with entirely negative findings on autopsy, were reported among 50,314 morbidly obese patients in the care of surgeons performing operations to achieve weight loss. This represented an extrapolated overall annual mortality rate of 65 deaths per 100,000 patients, about 40 times higher than the rate of unexplained cardiac arrests in a matched nonobese population. Eight sudden deaths occurred while waiting for obesity surgery and 22 had cardiac arrest within 10 days after the operation. Late postoperative deaths (more than 4 weeks postoperatively) occurred in 30 instances. A possible marker of a predisposition for sudden, unexpected cardiac arrest was an electrocardiographic abnormality; namely, a Q-Tc interval prolonged to greater than 0.43 seconds. This feature, present in 29 of 38 tracings, denoted increased susceptibility to malignant ventricular arrhythmias. The perioperative clustering of arrests implicated nonspecific stresses incident to otherwise uneventful operations as triggers of lethal dysrhythmias in the absence of organic cardiac disease. Anoxemia after abdominal surgery is an added hazard. Length of postoperative survival among the late deaths was found to be unrelated to degree of initial obesity or to magnitude of weight loss. Patients who died in the late postoperative phase were still grossly obese (mean weight 114.2 kg). Cardiac weights in patients who died within 10 postoperative days (12 patients) or after an average of 103 days (20 patients) were the same (464 and 469 g, respectively), indicating that myocardial mass had remained intact. The data do not suggest nutritional depletion or lean tissue loss as plausible explanations for the cardiac arrests. Screening and postoperative monitoring for Q-T interval prolongation is indicated. Prophylactic beta-blockade in this vulnerable subset of the morbidly obese population may be instituted in anticipation of obesity surgery. The attendant physiologic stresses should be minimized by appropriate measures.