Is Obesity a Risk Factor for Mortality in Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery?

Abstract

Background— The published articles examining obesity and CABG surgery contain conflicting results about the role of body mass index (BMI) as a risk factor for in-hospital mortality. Methods and Results— We studied 16 218 patients who underwent isolated CABG in the Providence Health System Cardiovascular Study Group database from 1997 to 2003. The effect of BMI on in-hospital mortality was assessed by logistic regression, with BMI group (underweight, normal, overweight, and 3 subgroups of obesity) as a categorical variable or transformations, including fractional polynomials, of BMI as a continuous variable. BMI was not a statistically significant risk factor for mortality in any of these assessments. However, using cumulative sum techniques, we found that the lowest risk-adjusted CABG in-hospital mortality was in the high-normal and that overweight BMI subgroup patients with lower or higher BMI had slightly increased mortality. Conclusions— Body size is not a significant risk factor for CABG mortality, but the lowest mortality is found in the high-normal and overweight subgroups compared with obese and underweight.