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.