Results
208 patients who underwent cardiac surgeries at Baruch Padeh Medical Center in the years 2017-2019 who met the inclusion criteria participated in our study. Overall, AF post cardiac surgery was detected in 50 out of 208 (24%) patients. POAF was detected in 27 (15.5%) out of 175 patients without history of documented AF before cardiac surgery (Table 1). Among the 33 patients with history of AF before cardiac surgery, AF following surgery was detected in 23 (70%) patients.
The participants’ demographic and preoperative clinical data are summarized in Table 2. Patients with AF post cardiac surgery were older (66.2±8.0 vs 60.7± 11.4 years, p<0.001), utilized more preoperative anti arrhythmic drugs (AADs) (18.9% vs 4.5%, p<0.001), and had more AF history (46% vs 6.3%, p>0.001), previous cerebrovascular accident (CVA) (14% vs 4.4%, p=0.019) and prior valve replacement (10% vs 1.9%, p=0.009) compared to patients without AF post cardiac surgery. Hypertension tended to be more prevalent among patients with AF post cardiac surgery (74% vs 59.5%, p=0.06). In contrast, gender, height, weight, BMI, BSA, prior beta blockers , diabetes mellitus , dyslipidemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and interstitial lung disease, peripheral vascular disease (PVD), renal failure, undergoing dialysis, previous (TIA), coronary vascular disease, congestive heart failure (CHF), ejection fraction (EF), previous CABG, and prior percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were not statistically different between the two groups.
Table 3 presents intraoperative factors and laboratory results. Pump time, minimum PH, Pre and post-operative hemoglobin, pre and post-operative creatinine were not statistically different between patients with and without AF following cardiac surgery. Aortic clamp time tended to be longer among patients with AF post cardiac surgery, compared to patients without AF post cardiac surgery (116.7±52.0 vs 101.7±50.2 minutes, respectively , p=0.07).
Post surgical major bleeding, and infection were not statistically different between the two groups as presented in Table 4. In hospital mortality, including cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular within 30 days and mortality in the first year following the surgery were not statistically different between the two groups. Readmission within 30 days tended to be more prevalent among patients with AF post cardiac surgery compared to patients without AF post cardiac surgery (26% vs 14.6%, respectively , p= 0.06).