Overweight Patients ‘4 Times More Likely To Die’ After Heart Bypass Surgery, Study Says

A patient's weight may literally spell life or death when they undergo heart bypass surgery, a new study suggests.

Heart bypass surgery, or coronary artery bypass surgery, is the most common type of heart surgery performed on adults. This type of surgery is usually performed to reduce the risk of a heart attack by replacing damaged arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle with blood vessels taken from another part of the body.

Usually, a heart bypass surgery is called for when coronary arteries become damaged or blocked as this could lead to heart failure.

While a heart bypass surgery is most commonly performed to save lives, individuals with high body fat mass are four times more likely to die after undergoing this surgery, according to new research by Dr. Xavier Leroy from the Department of Anaesthesia and Resuscitation, CHU Lille, Lille, France, and his colleagues. The research found that certain factors, such as fat mass and lean body weight, may spell out complications for cardiac surgery.

The retrospective study had 3,373 respondents, who were patients that had undergone cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass. Mortality within a month was 2.1 percent of cases, and researchers took note of the significant differences in body mass index, lean body weight, and fat mass.

Additionally, it was found that the higher a patient’s BMI and fat mass and the lower their lean body weight, the more time they spent in the intensive care unit (ICU).

The study concluded that 25 percent of patients who had the highest fat mass were 4.1 times more likely to die compared to the 25 percent who had the lowest body fat mass.

Additionally, another 25 percent of patients who had the lowest lean body weight were 2.8 times more likely to die compared to the other 25 percent of patients who had the highest lean body weight. The study also found that body mass index, by itself, did not have any association with an increase in mortality and noted that BMI is flawed and crude as it does not take into account nutrition, fat mass, body fat distribution, cardiorespiratory fitness and other factors that affect mortality.

This study was presented at this year’s Euroanaesthesia congress which was held in Vienna, Austria from June 1 to 3.