The Prognostic Significance of Elevated Troponin Levels in Patients with Normal Coronaries Undergoing Surgery for Aortic Valve Stenosis

The Prognostic Significance of Elevated Troponin Levels in Patients with Normal Coronaries Undergoing Surgery for Aortic Valve Steno

Objective: The outcome of aortic valve replacement (AVR) in patients without occlusive coronary artery disease who present with raised pre-operative troponin is not clear. We therefore, investigated the operative mortality and morbidity in this subset of patients undergoing urgent surgery for aortic stenosis.

Methods: From a pool of 595 AVR patients in our institution’s database from July 2007 to July 2013, we reviewed the notes of all patients who underwent urgent surgery for aortic stenosis (n=57) and identified those with raised pre-operative troponin (n=16). We compared the observed operative mortality and major morbidity rates between patients with raised preoperative troponin levels (group I) and those with normal troponin levels (group II), and also with their predicted outcomes.

Results: The baseline and operative characteristics for the two groups were comparable. There was a trend towards higher operative mortality for group I patients (18.8% versus 7.3% for group II, P=.07). Whereas, the observed operative mortality for group I far exceeded the predicted (18.8% vs 12.5%, p=.05), for group II the observed was slightly lower than the predicted operative mortality (7.3% vs 9.3%, p=.63). On the other hand, the observed mortality was well below the predicted for the elective patients.

Conclusion: Patients with aortic stenosis and raised preoperative troponin undergoing urgent AVR may be at risk of higher operative mortality than predicted by the EuroScore. Further studies in this high risk group are warranted.