Association between Use of Preoperative Antihypertensive Medication and 90-Day Mortality after Noncardiac Surgery: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to determine whether use of preoperative antihypertensive medication is associated with postoperative 90-day mortality in the hypertensive adult population that underwent elective noncardiac surgery. Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, medical records of preoperative hypertensive patients who underwent noncardiac surgery at a single tertiary academic hospital from 2012 to 2018 were reviewed. Among the hypertensive patients, those prescribed to take antihypertensive medication continuously for more than 1 month before admission were defined as the HTN MED group; others were defined as the non-HTN MED group. Multiple imputation, propensity score (PS) matching, and logistic regression analysis were used for statistical analysis. Results: Overall, 35,589 preoperative hypertensive adult patients (HTN MED group: 26,154 patients, non-HTN MED group: 9,435 patients) were included in the analysis. After PS matching, each group comprised 6,205 patients; thus, 12,410 patients were included in the final analysis. The odds for 90-day mortality of the HTN MED group in the PS-matched cohort were 41% lower (odds ratio: 0.59, 95% confidence interval: 0.41-0.85; P = 0.005) than those of the non-HTN MED group. Comparable results were obtained in the multivariable logistic regression analysis of the entire cohort (odds ratio: 0.54, 95% confidence interval: 0.41-0.72; P < 0.001). Conclusions: This study showed that the use of preoperative antihypertensive medication was associated with lower 90-day mortality among hypertensive patients who underwent noncardiac surgery. Therefore, preoperative screening and treatment with appropriate antihypertensive medication are important for hypertensive patients.