Introduction:

Fasting hyperglycemia is a prognostic factor in surgery. Finding the highest risk threshold in cardiovascular surgery is a necessity in current medical practice.

Objective:

To estimate the ideal fasting glycemic threshold for a better prognosis in the clinical evolution of patients undergoing cardiac surgery.

Methods:

A prospective descriptive study was carried out in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, at “Hermanos Ameijeiras” Hospital from January to June 2017. The sample consisted of 191 patients; fasting blood glucose was determined in all patients. The Chi-square (X2) test of independence was used to evaluate the association between variables. A logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the independent effect of the variables studied. In addition, a Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve was constructed in which 1-specificity and sensitivity were plotted for each cut-off point defined for the glycemic values.

Results:

The 40-69 years age of the patients predominated, the male sex represented 60.7% of the sample, 55.5% had normal blood glucose levels and only 1.6% showed blood glucose levels higher than 15 mmol/L. Moreover, 33.5% had some type of complication; the patients with complications had blood glucose levels above 9.9 mmol/L in 84.4%. In the multivariate analysis, there was only statistical significance for the appearance of complications for glycaemia higher than 10 mmol/L.

Conclusions:

Fasting hyperglycemia was associated with higher risk of complications.

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