Effect of Age on Postoperative Results in Elderly Coronary By-pass Patients

Abstract

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to analyze the outcome results of coronary by-pass operations from a single institution. The post-operative neurologic complications have been analyzed in detail in order to fi nd out the risk factors and the relation of age and occurrence of neurologic complications has been assessed. Patients and Methods: In this retrospective study, we analyzed the prospectively collected data of 510 coronary by-pass patients. Neurological morbidity and mortality were evaluated with logistic regression analysis for elderly patients. Results: Of these 510 patients, 382 (74.9%) were male and 89 (17.5%) were older than 70 years of age. Post-operative mortality, pulmonary and neurologic morbidity occurred in 27 (5.3%), 78 (15.3%) and 26 (5.1%) patients, respectively. The comparison of patients with ? 70 and > 70 years of age showed that the differences were signifi cant (mortality 4.0% vs. 11.2%, p= 0.012; pulmonary morbidity 13.5% vs. 23.6%, p= 0.022; neurologic morbidity 3.3% vs. 13.5%, p= 0.0001). Presence of cerebrovascular disease (odds ratio= 4.72; p= 0.014) and advanced age (odds ratio= 3.55; p= 0.016) were independent predictors of neurologic complications. Every year increase above 51.5 years of age was associated with 5.8% (p= 0.049) increased neurologic complication risk. Conclusion: Elderly patients have higher rates of mortality, pulmonary and neurologic morbidity after coronary by-pass operations. Although no signifi cant associations were found between age and mortality, age constitutes an independent risk factor for neurologic morbidity along with presence cerebrovascular disease.