Does EuroSCORE predict length of stay and specific postoperative complications after coronary artery bypass grafting?

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Abstract

Background

To evaluate the performance of EuroSCORE in the prediction of in-hospital postoperative length of stay and specific major postoperative complications after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).

Methods

Data on 3760 consecutive patients with CABG were prospectively collected. The EuroSCORE model (standard and logistic) was used to predict in-hospital mortality, prolonged length of stay (> 12 days) and major postoperative complications (stroke, myocardial infarction, sternal infection, bleeding, sepsis and/or endocarditis, gastrointestinal complications, renal and respiratory failure). A C statistic (receiver operating characteristic curve) was used to test the discrimination of the EuroSCORE. The calibration of the model was assessed by the Hosmer–Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic.

Results

In-hospital mortality was 2.7%, and 13.7% of patients had one or more major complications. EuroSCORE showed very good discriminatory ability in predicting renal failure (C statistic: 0.80) and good discriminatory ability in predicting in-hospital mortality (C statistic: 0.75), sepsis and/or endocarditis (C statistic: 0.72) and prolonged length of stay (C statistic: 0.71). There were no differences in terms of the discriminatory ability between standard and logistic EuroSCORE. Standard EuroSCORE showed good calibration (Hosmer–Lemeshow: P > 0.05) in predicting these outcomes except for postoperative length of stay, while logistic EuroSCORE showed good calibration only in predicting renal failure.

Conclusions

EuroSCORE can be used to predict not only in-hospital mortality, for which it was originally designed, but also prolonged length of stay and specific postoperative complications such as renal failure and sepsis and/or endocarditis after CABG. These outcomes can be predicted accurately using the standard EuroSCORE which is very simple and easy in its calculation.

Introduction

Risk stratification has become an essential element in cardiac surgical practice. Early mortality and morbidity have been the clinical outcomes to be assessed by many models [1], [2], [3], [4], because their prediction is useful and range from helping determine the indications for surgery, estimate the need for resources, proper informed consent and quality monitoring of surgeons and institutions. The European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) based on a large patient database drawn across Europe has been developed for the prediction of in-hospital mortality in the whole context of cardiac surgery [5]. EuroSCORE was first introduced in 1999 [6] as an additive system (standard) and has gained wide acceptance in Europe [7], while it has also been validated in North America [8] and Japan [9]. Recently, the logistic algorithm became available [10] and it has been found to be a better risk predictor especially in high-risk patients [11]. The standard EuroSCORE model has also been evaluated in the prediction of direct costs [12], postoperative complications and postoperative length of stay [2], [13], [14], [15] with various successes.

We previously showed that EuroSCORE can be used to predict 3-month mortality, prolonged length of stay and major postoperative complications such as renal failure, sepsis and/or endocarditis and respiratory failure in the whole context of cardiac surgery [16]. Many predictive models however, such the ACC/AHA guidelines, include only CABG patients. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate and compare the performance of standard and logistic EuroSCORE in the prediction of in-hospital mortality, prolonged postoperative length of stay and major postoperative complications in our series of 3760 consecutive CABG patients at a single institution. In this study we evaluated major postoperative complications both as one variable as well as separate variables in order to test the performance of EuroSCORE in predicting specific complications.

Section snippets

Patient population and data

Our study consisted of 3760 consecutive adult patients who underwent CABG between January 1992 and March 2002 at the St. Luke's—Roosevelt Hospital Center affiliated with Columbia University. Registry databases were studied for pre-, intra- and postoperative data of the patients.

Data were prospectively collected during patient's admission as part of routine clinical practice and entered into the New York State adult cardiac surgery report. Risk stratification was performed according to the

Results

A total of 3760 patients underwent CABG in our institution. The median standard EuroSCORE was 6 (interquartile range, 4–9) and the median logistic EuroSCORE was 5.42 (interquartile range, 2.64–12.30). The mean age (± standard deviation) within the study sample was 64.1 ± 10.4 years. Table 1 shows patient and disease characteristics after dividing the patients into six subgroups according to the factors utilized by standard EuroSCORE. There was an increase in mean age and a percentage increase in

Discussion

Most risk stratification models in cardiac surgery use early mortality as an endpoint. Only a few models evaluate other relevant outcomes as morbidity and postoperative in-hospital length of stay or length of stay in the intensive care unit [2], [4], [13], [14], [15]. The EuroSCORE, however, was developed to score the mortality during the hospital stay [5]. There are some studies which tested the accuracy of EuroSCORE in predicting postoperative morbidity after CABG [2] or cardiac surgery [13],

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