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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2003;125:115-120
© 2003 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery
Surgery for Acquired Cardiovascular Disease (ACD) |
From the Department of Surgery, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York City, NY.
Read at the Eighty-first Annual Meeting of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery, San Diego, Calif, May 6-9, 2001.
Received for publication May 14, 2001. Revisions requested June 25, 2001; revisions received April 2, 2002. Accepted for publication April 18, 2002. Address for reprints: Daniel C. Lee, MD, c/o Dr Ting, 630 West 168th St, P&S 17-401, New York, NY 10032 (E-mail: wt60{at}columbia.edu).
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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| Material and methods |
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Data were analyzed with the SAS statistical analysis software package (SAS Institute, Inc, Cary, NC). Values are expressed as means ± SD unless otherwise specified. Data were first examined univariately with the Student t test for continuous variables and the Fisher exact test for discrete data. Other categorical analysis included use of the
2 test for trend and Mantel-Haenszel statistics. For the multivariable analysis, variables with a P value of less than .25 were entered into a logistic regression analysis model. The risk factor allowed into the final model with a P value of less than .05 is interpreted as an independent risk factor associated with in-hospital mortality and adjusted for other potential risk factors included in the equation.
| Results |
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Overall in-hospital mortality for all patients was 2.7% versus 3.3% and 2.4% (P < .001) for patients undergoing CABG with and without a history of transmural AMI, respectively.
Hospital mortality decreased with increasing time interval between CABG and transmural AMI: 14.2%, 13.8%, 7.9%, 3.8%, 2.9%, and 2.7% for less than 6 hours, 6 hours to 1 day, 1 to 3 days, 4 to 7 days, 7 to 14 days, and greater than 15 days, respectively. Mortality is more than double that of the baseline value when operations are performed within 3 days of transmural AMI. The graphic representation of the data is shown in Figure 1. Day 3 appears to be the point of inflection between the steep rise of mortality in early surgical intervention versus the lower mortality at the later time points. Mortality is clearly greater than the baseline value when surgical intervention is performed within 7 days of transmural AMI.
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| Discussion |
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DeWood and colleagues,
4,5 in Spokane, Washington, have been advocates of early operations after transmural AMI. Their conclusions were derived from a retrospective study of 440 patients with transmural AMI from 1971 to 1981. In that study it was reported that patients started on cardiopulmonary bypass within 6 hours of an AMI had significantly lowered short-term and long-term mortality. Although these results were impressive, the majority of these patients only had 1- or 2-vessel disease, and the mean age of the patients was only 54 years. Their study suggested that surgical revascularization might be performed with an acceptable mortality in the presence of AMI with improved myocardial protection, anesthesia, and surgical techniques. However, with the advent of thrombolytic therapy, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), and an aged population, the surgical patient we encounter today bears little resemblance to the patient population represented in the Spokane data.
A more recent prospective randomized study of 302 patients from 1993 to 1998 by Hochman and colleagues
23,24 showed improved survival in patients undergoing early revascularization after AMI complicated by cardiogenic shock. However, methods of revascularization in this study included either CABG or PTCA. Furthermore, the design of this trial would allow up to 54 hours after onset of AMI for either CABG or PTCA to be performed and still be considered early revascularization.
Many retrospective studies had been undertaken and resulted in a wide range of recommendations regarding the timing of operations and transmural AMI. Dawson and colleagues
3 reviewed 1698 patients in the early 1970s and recommended a 30-day waiting period. In the 1980s, Gertler and coworkers
15 studied 26 patients with transmural AMI and proposed a 12-day waiting period. In the 1990s, Deeik and associates
16 advocated a 7-day waiting strategy on the basis of comparison of 20 patients undergoing CABG with transmural AMI with patients without AMI. Finally, Braxton and associates
8 found 48 hours after a transmural AMI to be an acceptable timing for CABG by looking at 58 patients in the early 1990s. However, no one to date has reported a study on this topic with a contemporary patient population approximating the size of our patient population.
In this study we have shown that 3 days after a transmural AMI is a clear dividing line after which timing of surgical revascularization is no longer associated with mortality. Although the absolute mortality of CABG does not return to baseline until 7 days after the onset of transmural AMI, surgical intervention after 3 days shows no trend toward statistical significance as a potential added risk. Statistically, the risk of mortality would be the same whether one waits 3 days or 7 days. Early surgical intervention has the advantage of limiting infarct expansion and adverse ventricular remodeling.
25 However, there is a potential risk of ischemia-reperfusion injury, which might lead to hemorrhagic infarct extension, resulting in additional myocardial injury.
26
It is unclear why surgical intervention within 3 days of transmural AMI might be an added risk for mortality. It has been reported that serum C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of acute inflammatory response that increases precipitously after transmural AMI, plateaued on day 3 after the infarction. In addition, this peak level is a strong indicator of prognosis after a first transmural AMI.
27,28 One might speculate that surgical revascularization within 3 days of an AMI, during the rising phase of CRP, might further augment such a systemic inflammatory response and affect prognosis because CABG is known to cause an increase in serum CRP level with or without cardiopulmonary bypass.
29
A multicenter retrospective study on the basis of a large database such as ours certainly has its weaknesses. Each individual surgeon and hospital likely used different protocols and standards relating to surgical techniques, cardiopulmonary bypass, and cardioplegic perfusion. Some might also question the accuracy of data entry. The New York State Department of Health performs periodic data audits to identify irregular reporting patterns to ensure data accuracy.
30 Furthermore, many of the important parameters, such as mortality rate, used in this study are objective variables and thus less susceptible to subjective interpretation.
In conclusion, this study revealed that CABG within 3 days of a transmural AMI might be an added risk for mortality. In the absence of absolute indications for emergency surgical intervention, such as structural complications and ongoing ischemia, a 3-day waiting period before CABG should be considered. There are important questions that remained to be answered, such as the role of thrombolytic therapy, early PTCA, and controlled surgical reperfusion in the management of transmural AMI. These questions require the cooperation of our cardiology colleagues in multi-institutional, prospective, randomized clinical trials.
| Appendix: Discussion |
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My first question is this. Because the mortality for CABG from days 3 to 7 is about 1.3 times the mortality subsequently, is it not feasible that an even larger databasefor example, collecting this same data in a national series for 2 or 3 yearsmight show that an operation within 1 week might be an independent predictor of mortality because we have extended with your larger database from 1 year to the next from 1 day to 3 days? If that is the case and if we even have, as you point out, a 3% to 5% difference in mortality, 1.03, if it were significant, would mean that you have reduced the mortality by 3% by waiting that additional 4 days. Would it not be feasible to think about collecting that data or even at this time waiting the additional 4 days?
My second question is based on a concern that you have not addressed, the more difficult and more penetrating question that we all face. In a patient who begins to have angina or congestive failure or even hemodynamic instability after a transmural infarction in the first few days, when do we advocate medical therapy or even balloon pump insertion to postpone the operation rather than proceeding to the operating room? Can your data help us to answer these questions?
For example, a patient with shock after an AMI has a 60% to 70% mortality with medical therapy. On the basis of your data and other persons' data, the mortality is about 20% to 30% or less with good surgical therapy. Can you use your data to predict mortality on the basis of multiple preoperative predictors at various times after transmural infarction and compare that with medical mortality so that we can make an evidence-based decision as to the risk and benefit of CABG early after infarction?
We know there is an increased risk of operation in the first few days compared with operation 2 weeks later. What we need to know is the relative risk of surgical therapy in the first few days in a particular patient compared with the medical risk in that same patient.
Dr Lee. Thank you, Dr Guyton. The paper we presented 15 months ago focused on contrasting the difference in the patterns of mortality with respect to timing of surgical intervention in transmural and nontransmural myocardial infarction. In that study the timing of the operation between 1 to 7 days after an AMI was grouped together, as guided by previous publications. With the size of the New York State Database, we were able to break up this subgroup for the first time to analyze mortality on a day-to-day basis and to obtain statistically significant results.
Since the submission of the initial abstract, we added 2 additional years of data and found no change in the conclusions. Statistically, it is unlikely that further extension of the database will produce different results because the P values and odds ratios for CABG after 3 days of a transmural AMI showed no trend toward statistical significance in the multivariate analysis.
In this study we addressed the question of when surgical revascularization can be performed safely after a transmural AMI. Surgical intervention after an AMI complicated by congestive heart failure or cardiogenic shock represents a different patient population. We are currently working on the latter question.
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