Cardiac Troponin T for Prediction of Short- and Long-Term Morbidity and Mortality after Elective Open Heart Surgery

Background: Increased cardiac troponins in blood are observed after virtually every open heart surgery, indi-cating perioperative myocardial cell injury. We sought to determine the optimum time point for blood sam-pling and the respective cutoff value of cardiac troponin T (cTnT) for risk assessment in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Methods: In a series of 204 patients undergoing sched-uled open heart surgery, mainly for coronary artery bypass grafting (n 132) or valve repair (n 27), cTnT concentrations were measured before and 4 and 8 h after cross-clamping and then daily for 7 days. Individual risk was assessed by use of the Cleveland Clinic Foun-dation Risk score and intraoperative risk indicators such as duration of cardiopulmonary bypass, cross-clamping