There are currently 8 million surgeries in the United States on patients with known or suspected cardiac disease.
Preoperative evaluation can help stratify risk.
Several methods of assessing risk are available. The Goldman index. Useful in predicting cardiac events in an unselected, random group of patients. However, it does not work well when applied to subgroups, such as all those with known heart disease. The type and extent of surgery anticipated needs to be taken into account when one is interpreting the results of the Goldman index.