Association of Preoperative Functional Status With Short-Term Major Adverse Outcomes After Cardiac Surgery

Introduction Cardiac surgery plays a crucial role in treating a wide range of cardiovascular conditions, offering life-saving interventions for patients with diseases such as coronary artery disease, heart valve disorders, and heart failure. However, these procedures are not without significant risks, including complications such as stroke, acute kidney injury, respiratory failure, and infections. It is important to not only recognize the potential complications associated with these procedures but also identify high-risk patients early in the treatment process. With the aging population and the increasing burden of comorbidities, a growing number of patients are likely to present with suboptimal functional status prior to cardiac surgery. By incorporating functional status into preoperative evaluations, healthcare providers can improve patient selection, enhance perioperative care, and improve outcomes in this high-risk patient population. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether preoperative dependent functional status is associated with an increased risk of postoperative major adverse outcomes in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Methods We performed a retrospective cohort analysis on adult cardiac surgery patients based on the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) 2011-2021 database. We compared a primary composite outcome consisting of post-surgery outcomes between independent and partially/totally dependent patients. The primary outcome was defined as experiencing any of the following adverse events: superficial incisional/deep incisional/organ space surgical site infection, death within 30 days post-operation, stroke/cerebral vascular accident (CVA), cardiac arrest requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism (PE), deep vein thrombosis (DVT)/thrombophlebitis, progressive renal insufficiency, ventilator use for more than 48 hours post-operation, unplanned intubation or reoperation, sepsis, septic shock, and pneumonia. Confounding variables were age, gender, race, emergency case, comorbidities, and baseline laboratory markers. We used multivariable logistic regression analysis to obtain adjusted odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results Of the 42,917 patients included in the study, 30.6% were female and 69.4% were male, with 46.5% of the group being 65-79 years old. The prevalence of dependent status was 2.6%. Compared to independent patients, those who were dependent had a higher incidence of the primary outcome (35.68% vs. 20.93%), yielding a crude OR of 2.09 (95% CI 1.85-2.37). The association remained significant: OR of 1.21 (95% CI 1.04-1.41) after adjustment for age, gender, race, body mass index (BMI), emergency case, and other comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, preoperative blood transfusion or sepsis, and laboratory markers. Conclusion Patients with preoperative dependent functional status were found to have a significantly greater risk of complications after cardiac surgery, even after adjusting for demographics, comorbidities, laboratory markers, and perioperative characteristics. Further investigation is needed to explore the development and clinical application of a predictive tool that includes functional status, which could help identify high-risk patients and facilitate timely interventions such as prehabilitation programs to enhance functional capacity.