Acute cardiac care & resuscitationCohort study
Prognostic Significance of Plasma Lactate Levels in Postcardiotomy Patients
- retrospective, multicenter study
- consecutive adult postcardiotomy patients
- 2 academic centers
- 2015–2024
Authors' conclusion
Elevated plasma lactate levels were common after cardiac surgery and independently associated with in-hospital mortality, with risk rising exponentially from ≥5.0 mmol/L. No statistically significant differences in discriminative performance between plasma lactate, SCAI SHOCK classification, and EuroSCORE (European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation) II were observed.
Study context
- Population
- Consecutive adult postcardiotomy patients from 2 academic centers between 2015 and 2024
- Participants
- 8,519 patients
- Exposure
- discriminative performance of plasma lactate compared with the SCAI SHOCK classification
- Outcome
- In-hospital mortality
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Overall in-hospital mortality
2%
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Area under the curve
| Outcome | Plasma lactate | SCAI SHOCK classification | area under the curve | P value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discriminative performance to predict in-hospital mortality (area under the curve) · POD 1 · higher with SCAI SHOCK classification | 0.75 | 0.81 | 0.81 vs 0.75 | P = 0.050 |
Baseline characteristics
- median age
- 68 years (Q1-Q3: 59-74 years)
- males
- 72%
Elevated plasma lactate · POD 2
- Highest plasma lactate levels on POD 2; patients with elevated plasma lactate
- 46%
- declining thereafter
Discriminative performance to predict in-hospital mortality (area under the curve) · POD 1
- values were comparable on the following postoperative days (PODs)
Original publication
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it