Preoperative risk assessment tools for morbidity after cardiac surgery: a systematic review.

Background: Postoperative morbidity places considerable burden on health and resources. Thus, strategies to identify, predict, and reduce postoperative morbidity are needed.

Aims: To identify and explore existing preoperative risk assessment tools for morbidity after cardiac surgery.

Computerized technologies informing cardiac catheterization and guiding coronary intervention.

Advances in image processing and computer hardware have enabled the development of user-friendly software which operate in real-time and can be used in the catheterization laboratory to facilitate percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The two dimensional-(2D) quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) systems that have traditionally been used to assess lesion severity have been replaced by 3D-QCA systems, enabling more reliable evaluation of vessel geometry and lesion dimensions. This also allows 3D reconstruction of coronary bifurcation anatomy and generation of models that can be processed by computational fluid dynamic techniques to reliably detect flow-limiting lesions.