Association Between Functional Tricuspid Regurgitation and Mortality Following Cardiac Surgery

Current guidelines recommend concomitant repair of certain non-severe cases of tricuspid regurgitation (TR) in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, but the prognostic relevance and postsurgical impact of the TR remain uncertain.

The purpose of this study was to determine the prognostic impact of functional TR in patients undergoing diverse cardiac surgeries and to examine the effect-modifying role of patient characteristics in patients in whom TR confers a greater risk of adverse outcomes.

Patients undergoing coronary artery bypass, aortic, and mitral valve surgery were included. Patients with severe TR, organic tricuspid valve pathology, undergoing tricuspid valve surgery or without a recent preoperative echocardiogram were excluded. Clinical variables were extracted from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery Database. An independent cohort was used for external validation.

Of 2,119 patients (mean age 67.4 years; 29% females), TR severity was moderate in 185 (9%), mild in 636 (30%), trivial in 1,126 (53%), and absent in 172 (8%). There were 238 deaths during the median follow-up period of 2.6 years. After adjusting for relevant factors, moderate TR was found to be independently associated with mid-term mortality (HR: 2.58; 95% CI: 1.22-5.47) and with in-hospital mortality or major morbidity (OR: 3.18; 95% CI: 1.37-7.42). The association between TR and mortality was apparent when preoperative pulmonary artery systolic pressure was <40 mm Hg but not ≥40 mm Hg (P for interaction = 0.036).

In this diverse cohort of contemporary cardiac surgery patients, moderate functional TR was associated with increased mortality and major morbidity, particularly in the absence of pulmonary hypertension.