Background
Postoperative occurrence of AF has been associated with less favourable outcomes in
patients undergoing cardiac surgery and may result in increased postoperative morbidity
and mortality.
Objectives
A focused clinical question was designed and a meta-analysis of published studies
was performed to identify the effect of preoperative use of statins on the occurrence
of AF after cardiac surgery.
Methods
Using the Medline database, the Cochrane clinical trials database and online clinical
trial databases, we reviewed all RCTs and observational studies examining the effect
of statins on AF occurrence following cardiac surgery. We searched for the literature
published before April 2009 and earlier.
Results
This analysis identified six studies (observational studies) which examined the effect
of preoperative use of statins on AF occurrence following cardiac surgery, involving
10,165 patients. Contradictory to most of previous studies, the overall outcomes suggested
that the statins group did not have a significant decrease in AF occurrence following
cardiac surgery comparing to control group (P = 0.19).
Conclusions
The preoperative medication of statins showed no significant decrease in AF occurrence
following cardiac surgery in this meta-analysis result. More prospective studies and
researches are needed to explore and demonstrate the accurate mechanism and effect
of statins on postoperative AF.
Abbreviations:
AF (atrial fibrillation), RCTs (randomised controlled trials), MOOSE (meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology group), CABG (coronary artery bypass graft), CRP (C-reactive protein), WBC (white blood cells), ACE-I (angiotension converting enzyme inhibitors)Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
June 7,
2010
Received:
March 3,
2010
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
