Is bariatric surgery safe in patients with history of cardiac revascularization?

Abstract

The number of patients undergoing bariatric surgery with prior cardiac revascularization (CR) is rising. However, scarce data exist regarding the safety of bariatric procedures in these patients. The aim of this study is to compare postoperative cardiovascular and noncardiovascular outcomes among patients with different CR procedures. Academic hospital, United States. We retrospectively reviewed 2884 patients undergoing bariatric surgery from 2009-2018. Patients with prior CR were included and stratified into groups: coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), percutaneous coronary intervention with stent (PCI), and CABG + PCI. We described patient demographic characteristics, co-morbidities, smoking status, history of myocardial infarction, type of bariatric surgery, number of vessels grafted/stents, time from CR to bariatric surgery, length of stay, and cardiovascular and noncardiovascular 30-day outcomes. A control group composed of patients without prior CR undergoing bariatric surgery was used to compare the rate of complications to the total patients with prior CR. For continuous and categorical variables, t test and χ2 tests were performed, respectively. We identified 76 patients with prior CR undergoing bariatric surgery. The mean patient age was 61.4 ± 7.9 years, the mean body mass index was 41.7 ± 6.5 kg/m2, and male sex was predominant (71.1%). Among these, 50% (n = 38) had PCI, 39.4% (n = 30) had CABG, and 10.5% (n = 8) had CABG + PCI. Early cardiovascular complications rate included ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction (n = 2), pulmonary embolism (n = 1), supraventricular arrhythmia (n = 2), ventricular arrhythmia (n = 1), and pacemaker/defibrillator-insertion (n = 1). The overall rate of cardiovascular and noncardiovascular complications was 9.2% (n = 7) and 10.5% (n = 8) during the 30 days. Mortality rate was 0%. Comparison of rate of complications between groups did not show any statistical difference; no significant difference was found when comparing patients with prior CR to the 76 patients in the control group (P > .05). Although revascularized individuals have severe co-morbidities and are high-risk patients, bariatric surgery remains safe in this population when outcomes are compared with bariatric patients without prior CR.