Does EuroSCORE predict length of stay and specific postoperative complications after coronary artery bypass grafting?

Background: To evaluate the performance of EuroSCORE in the prediction of in-hospital postoperative length of stay and specific major postoperative complications after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods: Data on 3760 consecutive patients with CABG were prospectively collected. The EuroSCORE model (standard and logistic) was used to predict in-hospital mortality, prolonged length of stay (> 12 days) and major postoperative complications (stroke, myocardial infarction, sternal infection, bleeding, sepsis and/or endocarditis, gastrointestinal complications, renal and respiratory failure). A C statistic (receiver operating characteristic curve) was used to test the discrimination of the EuroSCORE. The calibration of the model was assessed by the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic. Results: In-hospital mortality was 2.7%, and 13.7% of patients had one or more major complications. EuroSCORE showed very good discriminatory ability in predicting renal failure (C statistic: 0.80) and good discriminatory ability in predicting in-hospital mortality (C statistic: 0.75), sepsis and/or endocarditis (C statistic: 0.72) and prolonged length of stay (C statistic: 0.71). There were no differences in terms of the discriminatory ability between standard and logistic EuroSCORE. Standard EuroSCORE showed good calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow: P>0.05) in predicting these outcomes except for postoperative length of stay, while logistic EuroSCORE showed good calibration only in predicting renal failure. Conclusions: EuroSCORE can be used to predict not only in-hospital mortality, for which it was originally designed, but also prolonged length of stay and specific postoperative complications such as renal failure and sepsis and/or endocarditis after CABG. These outcomes can be predicted accurately using the standard EuroSCORE which is very simple and easy in its calculation. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.