Predictors and Outcomes of Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting: A Systematic and Untargeted Analysis of More Than 120,000 Individuals and 1,300 Disease Traits

OBJECTIVE: To perform an untargeted data-driven analysis on the correlates and outcomes of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). DESIGN: FinnGen cohort study. SETTING: The authors collected information on up to 1,327 disease traits before and after CABG from nationwide healthcare registers. PARTICIPANTS: A mixed population and patient sample of 127,911 individuals including 3,784 CABG patients. INTERVENTIONS: The authors assessed the association between (1) traits and incident CABG and (2) CABG and incident traits using multivariate-adjusted Cox models. MAIN RESULTS: Patients who underwent CABG and were in the fourth quartile of a risk score based on the top predictors of mortality had 12.2-fold increased risk of dying (95% confidence interval [CI], 10.3-14.5) compared with those in the first quartile. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD risk factors were most strongly associated with incident CABG. However, CABG was associated with death due to cardiac causes (hazard ratio [HR], 3.7; 95% CI, 3.5-4.0) or other causes (HR, 2.5; 95% CI, 2.4-2.7). CABG also was related to increased risk of several non-CVD traits, including anemia (HR, 3.4; 95% CI, 2.8-4.1), gastrointestinal disorders (HR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.8-2.6), acute renal failure (HR, 4.2; 95% CI, 3.5-5.1), septicemia (HR, 3.6; 95% CI, 3.1-4.1), lung cancer (HR, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.9-2.8), Alzheimer's disease (HR, 2.5; 95% CI, 2.2-2.7), and chronic obstuctive pulmonary disease (HR, 2.5; 95% CI, 2.2-2.9). CONCLUSIONS: Known CVD risk factors associate most strongly with incident CABG. However, CABG is associated with increased risk of several, somewhat unexpected, non-CVD traits. More detailed study of these links is warranted to establish potential causality and pathogenesis.