Trends in Reoperative Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery for Older Adults in the United States, 1998 to 2017

Background The likelihood of undergoing reoperative coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) is important for older patients who are considering first‐time CABG. Trends in the reoperative CABG for these patients are unknown. Methods and Results We used the Medicare fee‐for‐service inpatient claims data of adults undergoing isolated first‐time CABG between 1998 and 2017. The primary outcome was time to first reoperative CABG within 5 years of discharge from the index surgery, treating death as a competing risk. We fitted a Cox regression to model the likelihood of reoperative CABG as a function of patient baseline characteristics. There were 1 666 875 unique patients undergoing first‐time isolated CABG and surviving to hospital discharge. The median (interquartile range) age of patients did not change significantly over time (from 74 [69–78] in 1998 to 73 [69–78] in 2017); the proportion of women decreased from 34.8% to 26.1%. The 5‐year rate of reoperative CABG declined from 0.77% (95% CI, 0.72%–0.82%) in 1998 to 0.23% (95% CI, 0.19%–0.28%) in 2013. The annual proportional decline in the 5‐year rate of reoperative CABG overall was 6.6% (95% CI, 6.0%–7.1%) nationwide, which did not differ across subgroups, except the non‐white non‐black race group that had an annual decline of 8.5% (95% CI, 6.2%–10.7%). Conclusions Over a recent 20‐year period, the Medicare fee‐for‐service patients experienced a significant decline in the rate of reoperative CABG. In this cohort of older adults, the rate of declining differed across demographic subgroups.