Jawitz OK, Gulack BC, Brennan JM, et al. - In order to determine the long-term influences of postoperative complications after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), researchers undertook this study utilizing isolated CABG records from 2007 through 2012, identified from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery Database. There were 294,533 isolated CABG patients who had records joined to Medicare for long-term follow-up, of those, 120,721 (41%) developed at least one of the postoperative complications of interest, including new onset atrial fibrillation (30.0%), prolonged ventilation (12.3%), renal failure (4.5%), reoperation (3.5%), stroke (1.9%), and sternal wound infection (0.4%). In relation to the development of postoperative complications, an elevated risk of both early and late death as well as all-cause rehospitalization, especially during the “value” window within 90 days of CABG, was reported. The necessity to form avoidance strategies and cost-adjustment methods for each of these complications was emphasized.