Study Reveals Women Face Higher Mortality Risk in Heart Surgery

Healthcare professionals perform heart surgery to treat people with blocked arteries. A recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology revealed that women who undergo heart surgery to treat blocked arteries face a higher risk of complications and death as compared to men.   

In this research, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine focused on a type of heart surgery called coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). They used data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery database. This research involved 1,434,225 patients who underwent CABG surgery between 2011 and 2022. Among these patients, 344,357 were women.   

When researchers observed and studied the collected data, they found that these participant women who underwent CABG surgery had lower levels of red blood cells during surgery as compared to men. This data revealed that the mortality rate in women was 2.8% and 1.7% in men. The risk of mortality during surgery was almost double for women.  

Researchers tried to understand the reasons behind this. They looked at a few factors such as intraoperative anemia- a drop in blood count during surgery, operative mortality- death during or shortly after surgery, and gender. When they noticed intraoperative anemia, they found women had lower levels of red blood cells before the surgery as compared to men, and it was 36.9% and 41%, respectively. This blood level dropped even more during the surgery, around 22% for women and 27% for men.   

The results of this study show that this drop in red blood cell levels during surgery was the main reason why women died and faced a high risk. About 38.5% of the increased risk for women was because of this drop in red blood cells during surgery.   

This study is one of the vital research projects as it shows factors that can increase the risk of death during surgery. It suggests that healthcare professionals should keep red blood cell levels above 22% during surgery. This can help healthcare professionals to reduce the risk of death of women during heart surgery. By using the findings of this study, healthcare professionals can make effective strategies for individuals undergoing heart surgery to save more lives.   

Reference Link:   

Lamia Harik et al, Intraoperative Anemia Mediates Sex Disparity in Operative Mortality After Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting, Journal of the American College of Cardiology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2023.12.032