1. Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
The Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure (STICH) randomised controlled trial (RCT) found that serious postoperative complications occurred in nearly one-quarter of patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) for ischaemic cardiomyopathy and that these events were associated with 30-day mortality1. There was a clear gradation demonstrated between the number of complications that occurred and a patient’s survival: patients with no complications had <1% mortality, those with 1 complication had 7% mortality, those with 2 had 31% mortality, those with 3 had 33% mortality, and those with ≥4 complications had 59% mortality at 30 days. While there are published data on the occurrence and prognostic ...