Our results indicated that BARC, E-CABG and UDPB but not PLATO classifications can effectively stratify the severity of postoperative bleeding. Moreover, bleedings classified as BARC type 4, E-CABG class 2 and 3 and UDPB class 4 were independently associated with an increased risk of in-hospital death and postoperative MI.
Bleeding has been recognized as important determinants of outcomes after cardiac surgery according previous studies.16-18 Quantifying the amounts of blood products transfusions is an important factor to measure the severity of bleeding. A study from Koch et al. demonstrated the correlation between RBC transfusion and increased risk of postoperative morbid events including mortality, renal failure, prolonged ventilatory support, serious infection, cardiac complications and neurologic events, along with increased costs of care.19, 20 Even minor transfusion such as 1 and 2 units of red blood cells is significantly associated with increased morbidity and mortality after OPCAB.21 Reexploration for bleeding is also a common factor in different bleeding classification, which has been reported to be an important source of morbidity after cardiac surgery.22 Therefore, an effective stratifying system for bleeding events according to bleeding-related factors is helpful and necessary to estimate outcomes of cardiac surgery. Although several stratifying systems for severity of perioperative bleeding have been proposed, validation on their prognostic significance was required.
In accordance with our results, the UDPD classification was suggested to have an important effect on both short- and long-term survival after CABG by several studies.7, 23 Kinnunen et al. evaluated the clinical significance of UDPB classification in patients undergoing isolated CABG and observed the association between high UDPB classes and poorer immediate and late outcomes.23 In addition to mortality, other adverse outcomes including AKI and low cardiac output were also associated high UDPB classes bleeding. In our recent study, we have confirmed that perioperative bleeding defined as the UDPB class 3 to 4 bleeding was associated with a higher risk of postoperative AKI in ACS patients who underwent OPCAB.24 The UDPB classification was based on the amount of chest tube blood loss, use of blood products and the need of reexploration or delayed sternal closure. Nevertheless, the need of data on transfusion of 6 different blood products makes its application complicated and limited its use in clinical and research activities.
BARC type 4 bleeding is the only one specific CABG-related bleeding definition.14 Bleeding events are much more common in CABG. And transfusion is inherent to cardiopulmonary bypass which makes it difficult to define a threshold for bleeding in CABG.25 Therefore, it is necessary to definite CABG-related, and non–CABG-related bleeding separately. BARC type 4 bleeding used the same criteria as the bleeding in the setting of CABG defined by the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI)2, 26 bleeding definition which integrated mainly laboratory-based data. It has been confirmed to be associated with 4 to 5 times higher risk of mortality.10 The E-CABG classification measures the severity of bleeding by quantifying the amount of blood products administered to correct anemia and prevent further blood loss as well as reexploration for bleeding. The E-CABG bleeding has been shown robust association with adverse events, such as in-hospital death and prolonged intensive care unit stay, after cardiac surgery.8, 27 On the contrary, the PLATO classification in which drop of hemoglobin played an important role showed poor predictive performance of clinical likely because it was poorly applicable to surgical patients. And BARC classification type 1 to 3 were excluded due to its similarity with PLATO.28 It is noteworthy that decrease in hemoglobin or hematocrit is always included in bleeding definition for nonsurgical operation, such as PLATO bleeding and TIMI non-CABG related bleeding, rather than bleeding definition for surgical operation which emphasize the intervention to reduce ongoing bleeding including blood products transfusion.
The present study provided validation of four different bleeding classification in a large cohort of patients undergoing CABG. We observed that bleeding defined as BARC type 4, E-CABG class 2 and 3 and UDPB class 4 carried a higher risk of in-hospital death and postoperative MI as well as AKI. Such results of our study confirmed that BARC, E-CABG and UDPB were promising research tools for stratification of bleeding risk. Appropriate stratification of bleeding events can provide prognostic information and be useful for estimating the risk of adverse outcomes.
There are some limitations in our study that must be acknowledged. Firstly, the retrospective nature of the present study was an important limitation and prospective data collection might yielded better source documentation to classify bleeding complication. However, the data regarding hemoglobin, transfused blood products and outcomes in hospital were retrieved from medical records system which was considerably reliable. Secondly, the lack of data on follow-up after surgery prevented us to evaluate the long-term effect of major bleeding on the clinical outcomes. But majority of bleeding events and adverse events resulting from bleeding occurred during perioperative period. Thirdly, the present study only enrolled patients undergoing OPCABG and further studies are needed to investigate the prognostic significance of bleeding classifications in patients undergoing other cardiac surgery.