Heart Failure and Perioperative Mortality

Much of the literature on perioperative morbidity and mortality after noncardiac surgery focuses on patients with coronary artery disease. In these two studies, researchers focused instead on those with heart failure.

Using a Medicare claims database, researchers at Duke University identified 159,000 patients who underwent 1 of 13 noncardiac surgical procedures (mostly vascular, orthopedic, or abdominal). Eighteen percent of the patients had heart failure (with or without CAD), 34% had CAD (without heart failure), and 47% had neither (the comparison group). Thirty-day operative mortality was significantly higher in the heart failure group (8.0%) than in the CAD group (3.1%) or the comparison group (2.4%). After adjustment for demographic var…