Pleural Effusions After Cardiac Surgery

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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Pleural effusions occur commonly in patients recovering from cardiac surgery, however, the impact on outcomes is not well characterized. The purpose of this study is to characterize the outcomes of cardiac surgery patients with pleural effusions. All patients undergoing cardiac surgery between 2006 and 2019 were included in this observational, cross-sectional analysis using propensity matching.

Detailed Description
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Pleural effusions are common in patients recovering from cardiac surgery. Symptomatic patients with pleural effusions complain of shortness of breath, cough, chest pain and are more hypoxic and tachypneic. Clinically significant effusions can slow recovery in the hospital and beyond, and are a critical source of hospital readmissions after discharge. It is not well characterized how this impacts hospital outcomes. Further it is unknown if the effusions themselves are associated with impaired outcomes, or if pleural effusions simply arise in more complicated, older patients, thus suggesting the impaired outcomes are the result of coexisting morbidities. To better understand the impact of this complication and to address the question mentioned before, this study was carried out to determine the clinical and economic outcomes of pleural effusions in propensity-matched patients during early recovery from cardiac surgery. To compare patient groups with and without pleural effusion, the following baseline characteristics were used: e.g. age, sex, body-mass-index, priority of surgery, type of surgery, duration of surgery, APACHE II Score of patients on admission in the ICU.

Official Title
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Pleural Effusions Are Associated With Adverse Outcomes After Cardiac Surgery

Conditions
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Pleura; Effusion

Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: In-patients of the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin at least 18 years old female or male sex cardiosurgical intervention (OPS 5.35 and 5.36) between 01/06 and 12/19 post-operative monitoring in the intensive care unit Exclusion Criteria: previous cardiosurgical interventions during the same hospital stay incomplete documentation.

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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No

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Group 0<br>patients without pleural effusion | |
| Group 1<br>patients with pleural effusion | |
| Group 2<br>patients with pleural Effusion and need of drainage | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| mortality | In-Hospital mortality | an average of 30 days | 
| hospital stay | Length of hospital stay | an average of 30 days | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Need of drainage | Incidence of drainage in patients with pleural effusions | an average of 30 days | 
| extubation | time to extubation | an average of 15 hours | 
| renal replacement | incidence of renal replacement therapy | an average of 30 days | 
| transfusions | number of transfusions needed | an average of 30 days | 
| ICU stay | Length of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) stay | an average of 15 days |