Does 30-day mortality adequately capture early mortality after cardiac surgery compared to longer follow-up?
Standard 30-day mortality metrics underestimate early mortality for most cardiac surgeries, suggesting follow-up should be extended to ~120 days.
The course of early mortality after cardiac surgery differs across interventions and continues up to ∼120 days. Thirty-day mortality reflects only a part of early mortality after cardiac surgery and should only be used for benchmarking of isolated CABG procedures. The follow-up should be prolonged to capture early mortality of all types of interventions.
Siregar et al. (Thu,) studied this question.