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Background Noncardiac surgery is increasingly offered to an older, more comorbid population. The aim was to characterize patients with the diagnosis of heart failure (HF) undergoing elective and emergency noncardiac surgery in a broad, contemporary Swedish cohort, and to assess the short- and long-term mortality in patients with HF as compared with patients without HF. Methods and Results Data from 200,638 and 97,129 patients undergoing elective and emergency surgical procedures at 23 Swedish university, county, and district hospitals during 2007 to 2013 were analyzed through linkage of the surgical Orbit Database to the National Patient and the Cause of Death registries. In total 7212 patients (3.6%) with a diagnosis of HF before surgery underwent elective and 6455 patients (6.6%) underwent emergency surgery. Patients with HF were older had more comorbidities, and higher mortality than patients without HF. Crude and adjusted risk ratios for 30-day mortality after elective surgery were 5.36 (95% confidence interval [CI] 4.67-6.16) and 1.79 (95% CI 1.50–2.14) (adjusted for comorbidities, surgical risk level, age, and sex). Corresponding data for emergency surgery was 3.84 (95% CI 3.58–4.12) and 1.48 (95% CI 1.31–1.62). Mortality in patients with HF after elective surgery at 30 days, 90 days, and 1 year was 3.2%, 6.5%, and 16.2% and after emergency surgery it was 13.7%, 22.4%, and 39.3%. Conclusions Patients with HF undergoing elective or emergency noncardiac surgery in a modern surgical setting have a substantial mortality risk and HF is both a risk factor and a strong marker for increasd risk. The reasons for the high mortality are not well-understood and warrant further attention.

Although epidemiological studies have enhanced our understanding of acute kidney injury, defining the biologic processes corresponding to the clinical phenotype remains challenging. We have examined biomarkers associated with renal stress plus markers of glomerular function to assess whether this approach may aid prediction of AKI or other relevant endpoints.Urinary [TIMP-2]·[IGFBP7], serum creatinine, plasma cystatin C and plasma proenkephalin 119-159100 patients (14%) reached the primary endpoint. Markers of renal stress outperformed those associated with glomerular function. Combining [TIMP-2]•[IGFBP7] with serum creatinine, but not the other functional markers, significantly (p = 0.02) increased the area under the ROC curve (AUC) from 0.80 (0.76-0.84) to 0.85 (0.81-0.89). In patients who did not develop AKI, all markers of glomerular filtration, but not [TIMP-2]·[IGFBP7], were significantly elevated in patients with a history of CKD (p0.05).The combination of cell-cycle arrest biomarkers, TIMP-2 and IGFBP7, with serum creatinine but not cystatin C or PENK improved risk stratification for the development of stage 2 or 3 AKI over [TIMP-2]·[IGFBP7] alone.

Markers of renal function are widely used in intensive care and sudden changes are important indicators of acute kidney injury. The problem is to distinguish between disease progression/improvement from the natural variation in the patient. The aim of the present study was thus to study the normal intraday variation in ICU patients.We studied the intra-day variation of creatinine, cystatin C and estimated GFR based on these two markers in 28 clinically stable ICU patients.The median diurnal coefficient of variation sCV) for creatinine was 3.70% (1.92-9.25%) while the median CV for cystatin C was 3.66% (1.36-8.11%). The corresponding CVs for the estimated GFRs were 2.00% (0.89-9.82%) for eGFRcreatinine and 4.60% (1.65-10.24%) for eGFRcystc.The eGFRcreatinine values in individual patients were clearly higher than the eGFRcystc values. The median CV for creatinine, cystatin C and the eGFR measurements were below 5% which means that 95% of the test results will vary by10% between sampling times in stable ICU patients. Differences10% between sampling times are thus likely to be an indication of changes in biomarker levels due to the disease/treatment.

Background Acute kidney injury (AKI) after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is associated with early mortality. Its impact on the risk of myocardial infarction (MI) over time and long-term mortality has not been well described. Methods We performed a nationwide population-based cohort study in 27,929 patients who underwent a first isolated CABG between 2000 and 2008 in Sweden. Acute kidney injury was divided into three categories based on the absolute increase in postoperative serum creatinine (sCr) concentration compared with the preoperative baseline: stage 1, sCr increase of 0.3 to 0.5mg/dL; stage 2, sCr increase of >0.5 to 1.0mg/dL and stage 3, sCr increase of ≥1.0mg/dL. Results The overall incidence of postoperative AKI was 13%, 6.3% met the criterion for stage 1, 4.3% for stage 2 and 2.3% for stage 3. During a mean follow-up of 5.0years, there were 2119 (7.6%) MIs and 4679 (17%) deaths. Multivariable adjusted hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals for MI were 1.35 (1.15 to 1.57), 1.80 (1.53 to 2.13) and 1.63 (1.29 to 2.07), in AKI stages 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The corresponding hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 1.30 (1.17 to 1.44), 1.65 (1.48 to 1.83) and 2.68 (2.37 to 3.03), respectively. Conclusions Our results show that AKI after CABG is associated with an increased long-term risk of MI and death.