An appraisal of different cardiac risk reduction strategies in vascular surgery patients

Abstract

Objectives: To summarize existing evidence regarding the benefits and the risks of all available interventional and medical means aimed at cardiac risk reduction in patients undergoing vascular surgery. Design: Review of the literature. Materials and methods: A critical review of all studies examining the impact of various prophylactic cardiac maneuvers on perioperative outcome following vascular surgery was performed. Overall mortality, cardiac mortality and myocardial infarction rate were used as the outcome measures. Results: Coronary artery bypass grafting is associated with a 60% decrease in perioperative mortality in patients undergoing vascular surgery, but in most of the cases this decrease does not outweigh the combined risk of the cardiac and the subsequent noncardiac vascular procedure. Data supporting the cardioprotective effect of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty in the perioperative setting are insufficient. β-blockade has been shown to decrease perioperative mortality and cardiac morbidity in both high-risk (strong evidence) and low-risk (weak evidence) patients. Conclusions: Coronary revascularization is rarely indicated to simply get the patient through vascular surgery and should be reserved for patients who would need it irrespective of the scheduled vascular procedure. Among all available pharmacological agents, including β-blockers, α-agonists, calcium channel blockers and nitrates, only β-blockers have been proven to reduce the cardiac risk of vascular surgery.