Sarcopenia is a risk factor for major adverse cardiac events after surgical revascularization for critical limb ischemia.

Objectives: We examined the effect of sarcopenia on early surgical outcomes in patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI) in terms of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and major adverse limb events (MALE), as well as the value of inflammatory markers of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte (NLR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratios (PLR) as indicators of sarcopenia in CLI patients.

Methods: This was an observational retrospective single-center study. Patients who required surgical revascularization for CLI between October 2015 and December 2020 were identified. Psoas muscle areas were calculated from computed tomography images for psoas muscle index (PMI) calculations. Sarcopenia was defined as PMI < 5.5 cm/m for men and PMI < 4.0 cm/m for women. Risk factors for 30-day major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and major adverse limb events (MALE) were analyzed. NLR and PLR were compared between sarcopenic and non-sarcopenic patients.

Results: The mean age of 217 study patients was 61.5 ± 10.9, and 16 (7.4%) patients were female. 82 (37.8%) patients were sarcopenic. Patients with sarcopenia were older (65.1 ± 9.3 vs 59.4 ± 11.2, < .001) and history of myocardial infarction was more frequent (23.2% vs 12.6%, = 0.042) among sarcopenic patients. Sarcopenic patients more frequently encountered MACE (9.8% vs 0.7%, = 0.002), but not MALE. Sarcopenia increased early postoperative MACE in our cohort with an odds ratio of 11.925. NLR was not different between the two groups, while PLR was higher (127.16 vs 104.06, = 0.010) among sarcopenic patients. The platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio of 125.11 had a sensitivity of 53.7% and a specificity of 68.1% for differentiating sarcopenia.

Conclusions: Sarcopenia was associated with more frequent 30-day MACE and perioperative mortality after revascularization for CLI. 30-day MALE was not increased in patients with sarcopenia. The use of PLR as a simple marker of sarcopenia is limited by its low sensitivity and specificity.