The easier, the better: age, creatinine, ejection fraction score for operative mortality risk stratification in a series of 29,659 patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery.

Objective: Age, preoperative creatinine value, and ejection fraction are easily arranged in the age, creatinine, ejection fraction score to predict operative mortality in elective cardiac operations, as recently shown. We validate the age, creatinine, ejection fraction score in a large multicentric study.

Methods: We analyzed 29,659 consecutive patients who underwent elective cardiac operations in 14 Italian institutions during the period from 2004 to 2009.