How Long After Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery Can Patients Have Elective Safer Non-Cardiac Surgery?

To evaluate the complications and mortality after noncardiac surgeries in patients who underwent previous coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).

We used insurance data and identified patients aged ≥20 years undergoing noncardiac surgeries between 2010 and 2017 in Taiwan. Based on propensity-score matching, we selected an adequate number of patients with a previous history of CABG (within preoperative 24 months) and those who did not have a CABG history, and both groups had balanced baseline characteristics. The association of CABG with the risk of postoperative complications and mortality was estimated (odds ratio [OR] and 95% confidence interval [CI]) using multiple logistic regression analysis.

The matching procedure generated 2327 matched pairs for analyses. CABG significantly increased the risks of 30-day in-hospital mortality (OR 2.28, 95% CI 1.36-3.84), postoperative pneumonia (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.12-1.98), sepsis (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.17-1.89), stroke (OR 1.53, 95% CI 1.17-1.99) and admission to the intensive care unit (OR, 1.75, 95% CI 1.50-2.05). The findings were generally consistent across most of the evaluated subgroups. A noncardiac surgery performed within 1 month after CABG was associated with the highest risk for adverse events, which declined over time.

Prior history of CABG was associated with postoperative pneumonia, sepsis, stroke, and mortality in patients undergoing noncardiac surgeries. Although we raised the possibility regarding deferral of non-critical elective noncardiac surgeries among patients had recent CABG when considering the risks, critical or emergency surgeries were not in the consideration of delay surgery, especially cancer surgery.