Cardiac calculator predicts risk for perioperative MI and cardiac arrest

15 July 2011

MedWire News: Researchers have created a cardiac risk calculator that has higher predictive power for perioperative myocardial infarction (MI) and cardiac arrest (CA) than the Revised Cardiac Risk Index (RCRI).

Although the RCRI is the most commonly used cardiac risk stratification tool in surgical patients, it lacks predictive ability and fails to account for the surgical advances that have been made since its development, explain Prateek Gupta (Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USA) and colleagues in the journal Circulation.

They therefore decided to develop and validate a new cardiac risk calculator.

The study included 211,410 patients from the American College of Surgeons’ 2007 National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NCQIP) database.

In all, 1371 (0.65%) patients developed perioperative MI or CA. Multivariate analysis revealed that surgery type, dependent functional status, abnormal creatinine level (more than 1.5 mg/dl), American Society of Anesthesiologists’ class, and increasing age were predictors of perioperative MI or CA.