IMPACT OF AORTIC CLAMP TIME ON SHORT TERM OUTCOMES FOLLOWING ELECTIVE CARDIAC SURGERY: AN AFIC&NIHD EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Objective: To compare the impact of aortic clamp time on the immediate postoperative outcomes in high and
low risk patients undergoing elective CABG surgery.
Study Design: Descriptive cross sectional study.
Place and Duration of The Study: Armed forces Institute of Cardiology and National Institute of Heart
Disease (AFIC/NIHD) Rawalpindi from June to August 2015.
Material and Methods: All the data was prospectively collected in the adult cardiac surgery registry database.
Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery STS risk SCORE was used to stratify patients into low-risk (i.e. STS SCORE
< 16) and high-risk (i.e. STS SCORE >16) groups.
Results: The mean age of our study population was 56.89 ± 9.95 and there was male predominance 49(86%)
and 8(14%) females. The cohort was subdivided into two subsets based on the STS RISK SCORE stratification
of surgical risk. The first subset included low risk patients with STS SCORE of < 16 (N= 35, 61.4%) and the
second subset included high risk patients with STS SCORE of > 16 (N=22, 38.6%). Both of these groups were
then subdivided into two groups based on their CXP time as follow: clamp time < 60 minutes and clamp time
> 60 minutes. Among the low risk group 35 (61.4%) there was no statistically significant difference in most of
the variables in both the subgroups. However, the postoperative complications showed a statistically
significant rise in post operative stay (p- value 0.017) and prolonged ventilation (p- value 0.05) with the rise of
aortic clamp time.
Conclusion: Prolonged cross-clamp time signific..