Limitations
The present study has several limitations. Firstly, we are limited to
short-term outcomes without long-term follow-up. While, 30-day outcomes
following cardiac surgery are important for evaluation of safety and
efficiency, this data only forms part of the story. It is often reported
than sex ceases to be an independent determinant of outcomes following
cardiac surgery in a long-term follow-up (34) and it is important to
know if this pattern is also reflected in the UK population and
healthcare system. Secondly, this study used data from NACSA database
and therefore we were limited to analysing data collected for this
purpose.
Lastly, by the nature of being an observational non-randomised cohort,
despite adjusting for known confounders, the effect of unknown
confounders remains.