Mortality increases significantly about ten years after patients undergo heart bypass surgery, a Danish study has discovered for the first time.
Although people who undergo the procedure are likely to lead a normal life, the researchers report that something changes after eight and 10 years. At this point mortality increases between 60% and 80%.
A comprehensive national register-based study by the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, sheds light on the 30-year prognosis following a heart bypass operation.
It examined about 51,000 Danish patients who underwent surgery between 1980 and 2009 and this cohort was correlated with a control group of 500,000 people of the same age and gender from the general population.
Researchers found that 10-year-survivors have an increased mortality of between 60% and 80% when compared with the general population. Researchers believe it may be because the disease is progressive and that the atherosclerosis increases, or that the implanted material begins to fail.
Author Kasper Adelborg said this is new and important knowledge for the doctors who monitor these patients.
“The study shows that the rate of survival has improved over the last three decades, so that the probability of continuing your life following bypass surgery is close to being the same as in the general population,” said Mr Adelborg.
“This holds true providing that the patient has successful surgery and for the eight-ten years after the surgery. However, after this point the prognosis changes.”
Adelborg K and Toft Sørensen H. Thirty-Year Mortality After Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery. A Danish Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes June 2017.
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