Kidney Damage after Heart Surgery on the Rise
The incidence of kidney damage associated with coronary artery bypass surgery in the United States has increased significantly over the past 16 years, but the rate of death from such damage has decreased significantly during the period.
In an analysis of more than 5 million discharges from hospitals across the United States, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that the incidence of acute renal failure associated with coronary artery bypass surgery increased almost five-fold during the study period. The researchers estimate that approximately 20,000 cases of the disorder occurs nationwide each year.
The rate of death from acute renal failure caused by bypass surgery dropped almost three-fold during the study period. Patients with the disorder tend to have higher death rates, and also to require longer hospital stays, than patients who do not experience kidney damage after surgery.
Findings suggest that current strategies used to prevent acute renal failure following bypass surgery may not be as effective as previously thought. Postoperative acute renal failure remains a serious complication of bypass surgery that does not seem to have been
influenced by any strategies designed to prevent it.
More than 467,000 bypass procedures are performed each year in the United States.
Most cases of kidney injury after bypass surgery are transient and cause no serious damage. But up to 2 percent of affected patients will require kidney dialysis, and 60 percent of those patients will die before hospital discharge.
The team's analysis was not designed to uncover the reasons for the observed rise in incidence of acute renal failure. But the researchers speculate that it may be due, in part, to the growing use of an expanded definition of acute renal failure.