Quality of postoperative care after major orthopedic surgery is correlated with both long-term cardiovascular outcome and troponin Ic elevation.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study performed in patients undergoing major orthopedic surgery was to assess the impact of changes in practice on both the incidence of postoperative myocardial ischemia (PMI) detected by serial measurements of troponin Ic and long-term cardiac outcome. METHODS During a 3-yr period, troponin Ic was measured on the first 3 days after major orthopedic surgery in a multidisciplinary hospital. After 16 months of study, postoperative care was improved. Cardiac death, myocardial infarction, and cardiac failure were considered major adverse cardiac events and were recorded during the hospital stay and the first postoperative year. The incidences of PMI and major adverse cardiac events were used as result indicators for quality of care and compared before (P1) and after (P2) quality enhancement. RESULTS Three hundred seventy-eight surgical procedures were included (P1, 123; P2, 255). Incidences of PMI and major adverse cardiac events were 8.9 versus 3.9% (P=0.04) and 8.1 versus 1.9% (P=0.004) for P1 and P2, respectively. Using a multivariate Cox regression analysis adjusted for baseline data, independent factors associated with the occurrence of a major adverse cardiac event were phase P1 (hazard ratio=4.5; 97.8% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-17.4) and PMI (Hazard ratio=6.4; 97.8% CI, 1.6-26.4). CONCLUSIONS Our postoperative care policy after major orthopedic surgery strongly correlated with both short-term cardiac outcome (i.e., PMI with troponin Ic release) and long-term cardiac outcome. Thus, in a given surgical population, variation of incidence of troponin Ic elevations could be used as a result indicator for postoperative care policy.