Symptoms of coronary artery disease predict risks of surgery

BMJ 1995;311:628 (2 September)

Letters

Symptoms of coronary artery disease predict risks of surgery

EDITOR,--N Mamode and colleagues' editorial on the assessmentof patients before surgery is a reminder of the lack of reliablealgorithms for the non-invasive assessment of operative risk.¹Even with patients at high risk, such as those with peripheralvascular disease, there is no uniform strategy to predict therisk of perioperative cardiac events. Approaches ranging frominvasive preoperative cardiac catheterisation to merely 12 leadelectrocardiography have been advocated to assess the risk.

In attempts to predict the risk of surgery in patients withperipheral vascular disease, patients with symptomatic coronaryartery disease must be clearly distinguished from those withno clinical features of coronary artery disease. In an analysisof six series totalling about 4500 patients undergoing operationfor vascular disease, perioperative cardiac events occurredin a mean of 11% of patients with clinical evidence of coronaryartery disease and in only 1.7% of patients without it.²

These data . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?