Original articlesTransesophageal echocardiography-related gastrointestinal complications in cardiac surgical patients
Section snippets
Methods
The authors’ center is a 480-bed university-affiliated tertiary referral center. The center performs 350 to 400 cardiac cases a year and has 5 dedicated cardiac anesthesiologists. Intraoperative TEE has been performed at the center since August 2000. The audit population comprised consecutive adult cardiac surgical cases performed from January 2001 until May 2003.
Patients were categorized into 2 groups. Group 1 had cardiac surgery with intraoperative TEE, and group 2 had cardiac surgery without
Results
There were 859 patients who underwent cardiac surgery in the study period, 516 of whom had a TEE performed (group 1) and 343 who did not (group 2) (Fig 1). Patients in group 1 underwent CPB more frequently and had significantly higher Parsonnet scores, longer mean CPB times, and cross-clamp times (Table 1). The incidence of major GI complications after cardiac surgery in group 1 was 1.2% (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.53%-2.5%). Two patients (0.38%, 95% CI, 0.05%-1.40%) presented early and 4
Discussion
In this retrospective audit, the incidence of major GI complications after cardiac surgery was higher in patients who had undergone intraoperative TEE than those who did not undergo TEE (1.2% v 0.29%). Furthermore, all major GI complications in group 1 were considered to be possibly TEE related.
The rate of upper GI complications after cardiac surgery is low (0.8–1.4%),7, 8 and the incidence of TEE-related complications after cardiac surgery is even lower (0.01–0.04%).1, 2 In this audit, the
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