Cardiac risk of non-cardiac surgery.

Yes – death directly due to anaesthesia is less than 1 in a few hundred thousand. However 30 day mortality and morbidity following surgery is common and much of it is cardiac. Worldwide more than 200 million adults have major non-cardiac surgical procedures annually. Millions of these patients will have a major vascular complication (vascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction [MI], nonfatal cardiac arrest, or nonfatal stroke) within 30 days after surgery. Myocardial infarction is the most common major peri-operative vascular complication. For example in the original POISE (PeriOperative ISchemic Evaluation) study1 1.6% died of vascular causes, 0.7% had a stroke, 0.5% had a non-fatal cardiac arrest, and 5.0% had an MI in the first 30 days. Overall postoperative vascular events account for one third of perioperative deaths and are associated with increased hospital stay and long-term mortality rates.