Fast-Track Failure After Cardiac Surgery: Risk Factors and Outcome With Long-Term Follow-Up

An important cornerstone of the Enhanced Recovery After Cardiac Surgery initiative is a fast-track cardiac anesthesia management protocol. Fast-track failure has been described to have a detrimental impact on immediate postoperative outcomes. The authors here evaluated risk factors for short- and long-term effects of fast-track failure.

A retrospective cohort study.

A single academic center.

Adult cardiac surgery was performed on 7,064 patients between January 2013 and October 2019.

The inclusion criteria for the fast-track program at the postanesthesia care unit were met by 1,097 patients.

Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to identify independent risk factors. Fast-track failure occurred in 69 (6.3%) patients. These were associated with significant increases in the incidences of coronary revascularization, cardiac tamponade or bleeding requiring surgical intervention, new-onset atrial fibrillation, pneumonia, delirium, and sepsis. Likewise, the postoperative length of stay, and up to 5-year mortality, were significantly higher in the fast-track failure than the nonfailure group. The European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation II and transfusion of any blood product could be identified as independent risk factors for fast-track failure, with only limited discriminative ability (area under the curve = 0.676; 95% confidence interval, 0.611-0.741).

Fast-track failure is associated with increases in morbidity and long-term mortality, but remains difficult to predict.