Influence of peripheral vascular occlusive disease on the morbidity and mortality of coronary artery bypass grafting

The impact of peripheral vascular occlusive disease (PVD) on outcome for patients who have undergone coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) was assessed by comparing preoperative and intraoperative patient characteristics and outcome in 2 groups of patients who underwent CABG (patients with PVD, n=96; patients without PVD, n=593). Patients with PVD were significantly older (69+/-8.4 vs 63+/-8.7; p<0.0001), and had a higher incidence of diabetes mellitus (48% vs 32%; p<0.01), hypertension (62% vs 46%; p<0.01), preoperative cerebral infarction (26% vs 12%; p<0.001) and chronic renal dysfunction (11% vs 4.4%; p<0.01) than those without PVD. Postoperative morbidity and mortality were assessed, after those risk factors were adjusted, using multivariate logistic regression analysis. The perioperative myocardial infarction (PMI) rate and in-hospital mortality rate were significantly higher in patients with PVD than in patients without PVD (9.4% vs 3.0%; p=0.0108, 17% vs 2.7%; p=0.0003, respectively). The odds ratio of PMI and in-hospital mortality were 3.4 (95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.3-8.6) and 4.3 (95% CI: 2.0-9.5), respectively. Although the excess mortality rate was mainly the result of cardiac problems, such as low output syndrome or arrhythmia, in most of the cases, PVD, which may frequently prevent the use of the intraaortic balloon pump, also seemed to have a strong relation to postoperative morbidity and mortality.