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Patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), heart failure (HF), or atrial fibrillation (AF) are at elevated risk for complications when they undergo noncardiac surgery. To find out how this risk varies by these conditions, researchers used three large Canadian administrative databases to construct cohorts of patients with CAD (13,786 patients), nonischemic HF (7700), ischemic HF (12,249), and AF (4312). Procedures were emergent or urgent in 35% of patients; 20% had major procedures (e.g., abdominal or orthopedic surgery), and 80% had minor procedures.
Unadjusted 30-day postoperative mortality was 2.9% for CAD patients, 9.3% for those with nonischemic HF, 9.2% for those with ischemic HF, and 6.4% for AF patients. In patients who underwent re…