Performing coronary artery bypass grafting off-pump may compromise long-term survival in a veteran population.

BACKGROUND: There are ample data regarding the short-term outcomes of on-pump and off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), but little is known about the long-term survival associated with these approaches.

METHODS: Using the Veterans Affairs (VA) Continuous Improvement in Cardiac Surgery Program, we identified all VA patients (n = 65,097) who underwent primary isolated CABG from October 1997 to April 2011. The primary outcome measure was all-cause mortality. Age, 17 preoperative risk factors, and year of operation were used to calculate propensity scores for each patient. A greedy-match algorithm using the propensity scores matched 8,911 off-pump with 26,733 on-pump patients. Survival functions were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and compared by using the log-rank test.

RESULTS: In the complete cohort, off-pump was used in 11,629 of 65,097 (17.9%) operations. For the matched cohort, the median follow-up was 6.7 years (interquartile range, 3.72 to 9.35 years). Risk-adjusted mortality did not differ significantly between the off-pump and on-pump groups at 1 year (4.67% vs 4.78%; risk ratio [RR], 0.98; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.88 to 1.09) or 3 years (9.21% vs 8.89%; RR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.96 to 1.12). However, risk-adjusted mortality was higher in the off-pump group at 5 years (14.47% vs 13.45%; RR, 1.08; 95% CI 1.02 to 1.15) and 10 years (25.18% vs 23.57%; RR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.03 to 1.12). Overall, the hazard ratio for off-pump vs on-pump was 1.06 (95% CI, 1.00 to 1.13; p = 0.04).

CONCLUSIONS: Off-pump CABG may be associated with decreased long-term survival. Further studies are needed to identify the reasons behind this finding.