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Tsung O. Cheng, MD
The George Washington University Washington, DC

JAMA. 1996;276(21):1719.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The pathophysiological mechanisms responsible for the high incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) after coronary artery bypass surgery remain rather unclear. Consequently, identification of clinical predictors remains the most practical approach, as Dr Mathew and colleagues¹ demonstrated.

Among the predictors of postoperative AF, they listed advanced age and male sex. In a similar study published almost simultaneously, Aranki and colleagues² also found advanced age and male sex to be significant predictors. In addition, they found the need for an intraoperative intraaortic balloon pump (IABP) to be an independent predictor. I wonder if the MultiCenter Study of Perioperative Ischemia (McSPI) Research Group, which Mathew and colleagues represented, also found this.

Another noteworthy difference between these 2 studies was in the estimation of utilization of hospital resources resulting from this complication. Whereas Mathew et al¹ found the occurrence of postoperative AF was associated with an increase of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Margaret A. Winker, MD, Senior Editor, and Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, Senior Editor.

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