Pump-on Bypass Causes No Cognitive Decline

A study of 380 patients following bypass heart surgery with a heart-lung machine has found no significant differences in the patients' performance of mental tasks such as thinking, reasoning, and remembering.

The study compared the cognitive abilities of on-pump heart-surgery patients, off-pump heart-surgery patients, nonsurgical patients with coronary artery disease, and heart-healthy subjects. The results showed that on-pump heart-surgery patients had no significant differences than the other groups tested.

"This outcome should be reassuring to both patients and surgeons engaged in on-pump surgeries,” noted Guy M. McKhann, M.D., a professor in the department of neurology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD, USA).

The study involved 140 on-pump patients, 72 off-pump patients, 99 nonsurgical patients with coronary disease, and 69 heart-healthy subjects. All study participants were given a battery of standardized neuropsycholologic tests that were repeated three months and 12 months later. Test scores were combined into eight areas: verbal memory, visual memory, language, attention span, visuoconstruction, motor speed, psychomotor speed, and executive function.

The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale and Functional Status Questionnaire were also administered at baseline and follow-up. The team of investigators traveled to all the sites in the study to examine patients. Previous test results were not reviewed, in order to avoid biased results based on that knowledge. Self-reporting of well-being was also included in the study in the areas of memory, mental arithmetic, personality, and reading newspapers and books. When the study began, all subjects with coronary artery disease had overall lower performance than the heart-healthy group in several areas, but by three months later, all groups had improved.




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