EDITORIAL Chronic kidney disease: a gateway for perioperative medicine

In this issue of the BJA, Mases and colleagues1 on behalf of the Spanish ANESCARDIOCAT perioperative research group2 add important data to the expanding perioperative literature describing chronic kidney disease (CKD) as a consistent associ-ate with postoperative morbidity. This post hoc observational study confirms the findings of a previous meta-analysis, showing an increased risk of perioperativemajor cardiovascular events in patients with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR),45 ml min21 1.73 m22.3 These data extend the peri-operative CKD literature by assessing major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) in surgical populations other than vascular surgery,3 the chief focus of previous studies primarily due to the perceived higher event rate for MACCE in this population. At this juncture, it is worth bearing in mind that the ANESCARDIOCAT study defined MACC