The association between alcohol consumption and morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery

Objective: Moderate alcohol consumption appears protective against cardiovascular events and mortality in community-based epidemiologic studies, but whether its consumption affects perioperative outcomes remains unknown. Therefore, the authors tested the hypothesis that alcohol consumption of 3 or more drinks per week improves postoperative outcomes in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.

Design: A propensity-matched retrospective cohort study.

Setting: A major cardiovascular surgical institute, tertiary care teaching hospital.

Participants: Data from 13,065 patients undergoing elective CABG surgery at the Cleveland Clinic were analyzed.

Interventions: None.

Measurements and main results: Propensity scores were used to match alcohol users with infrequent/nonusers. From the matched subset, the relationship between alcohol use and the composite outcome (any major cardiac, renal, respiratory, infectious, or neurologic morbidity and mortality) was determined univariably with the Pearson chi-square test and multivariably using stepwise logistic regression. Estimation of the relationship between such alcohol use and hospital length of stay was of secondary interest. Patients who reported consuming at least 3 drinks per week experienced similar odds of the composite outcome (adjusted odds ratio [95% confidence interval] of 1.13 [0.96-1.34], p = 0.14) to infrequent or nonusers. In a secondary analysis, the hospital length of stay was unrelated to alcohol use (adjusted hazard ratio [95% CI] of 1.03 [0.97-1.09], p = 0.28).

Conclusion: The present results showed that alcohol consumption was not associated with the risk for postoperative complications in patients undergoing CABG surgery. Alcohol abusers could not be separated in this study, and, based on previous literature, this result might not be applied to them.