Long-term outcome of patients who require renal replacement therapy after cardiac surgery.

Background And Objective: Acute renal failure is a serious complication of cardiac surgery. We studied the long-term survival and quality of life of patients requiring renal replacement therapy after cardiac surgery, since they represent a heavy burden on hospital resources and their outcome has never been adequately evaluated.

Methods: Out of 7846 consecutive cardiac surgical patients, 126 (1.6%) required postoperative renal replacement therapy: their preoperative status and hospital course was compared with patients who had no need of postoperative renal replacement therapy. A multivariate analysis identified predictors of renal replacement therapy. Long-term survival and quality of life was collected in patients who had renal replacement therapy and in case-matched controls.

Results: Hospital mortality in the study group was 84/126 (66.7%) vs. 118/7720 (1.5%) in the control population (P 1000 mL, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and age.

Conclusions: This study confirms that the in-hospital mortality of patients requiring renal replacement therapy is high and shows a low long-term mortality with reasonable quality of life in patients discharged from hospital alive.