Ischaemic vascular disease and long-term mortality in emergency abdominal surgical patients: A population-based cohort study

Background: Emergency abdominal surgery carries a high mortality, as patients are often frail with significant comorbidity. We aimed to evaluate the association between co-existing ischaemic vascular disease (IVD) and long-term mortality in patients undergoing emergency abdominal surgery.

Methods: We included adult emergency abdominal surgical patients operated on 13 Danish hospitals between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2010. Appendectomies were excluded. Data were retrieved from the National Patient Registry (NPR) and the Danish Anaesthesia Database. Preoperative IVD status was retrieved from NPR. We used crude and adjusted Cox regression analysis. The primary outcome was mortality within eight years. The secondary outcome was mortality within 30 days.

Results: We included 4864 patients, of which 2584 (53.7%) died within 8 years. Some 20.9% (1019/4864) had preoperative IVD. The adjusted association between preoperative IVD and mortality within 8 years was hazard ratio (HR) 1.10 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.00-1.20; P = .045). At 30 days, this association was HR 0.97 (95% CI, 0.84-1.13).

Conclusion: In adult major emergency abdominal surgical patients, preoperative IVD was prevalent and associated with a 10% relative increase in long-term mortality, but not in short-term mortality.