Prevalence and Predisposing Factors for Cognitive Dysfunction Following Adult Cardiac Surgery

One of the adverse effects following cardiac surgery is cognitive dysfunction. The prevalence of cognitive dysfunction after heart surgery is reportedly 30% - 80%.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and risk factors of cognitive dysfunction in the ICU after heart surgery.
In this observational study, 99 adult patients who underwent elective cardiac surgery (valve and coronary) in a tertiary university hospital were examined. The cognitive state of the patients in the ICU 2 or 3 days after the operation was assessed using the MMSE scale. Perioperative predisposing factors were simultaneously considered.
The results showed that the majority of the patients (55.5%) had no cognitive impairment, while 39.4% had mild cognitive impairment and 5.1% had moderate cognitive impairment. Cognitive dysfunction had a significant relationship with the following factors: age (P = 0.11), cardiopulmonary bypass time (P = 0.002), aortic cross-clamp time (P = 0.002), and literacy (P = 0.019). The results also showed that cognitive dysfunction had no significant relationship with sex, previous history of surgery, preoperative and postoperative hemoglobin, blood glucose, diabetes, type of operation, and duration of operation.
The results of this study showed that 39.4% of our patients had mild cognitive impairment and 5.1% experienced moderate cognitive impairment following cardiac surgery. Significant relationships between cognitive dysfunction and age, education level, cardiopulmonary bypass time, and aortic clamp time were seen. In the logistic regression analysis, only age was related to cognitive impairment.