Background:The applicability of the Short Form (SF36) questionnaire to disparate populations led us to use this tool to investigate how health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) for patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is related to gender, age and survival.Method: SF36 data and the presence of cardiac symptoms were collected from 44 women and 166 men prior to surgery and from consenting survivors at one and eight-year follow-ups. Survival data were collected from government records for 18 years post operation. Paired t-tests, Pearson correlation coefficients, chi-squared tests and the log-rank test were used to investigate connections between HRQoL and age, presence of angina/breathlessness and survival within and across genders.Results: HRQoL improved significantly for males and females in almost all health domains at the one year follow-up. At the eight year follow-up most female domain scores showed further improvement whereas the majority of male domain scores declined. Cardiac symptoms were present in 75.8% of women and 68.3% of men (χ2=0.7120, p=0.3988) at the one-year follow-up, and 84.2% of women and 70.2% of men at the eight-year follow-up. Male long term survival (53.6% after 18 years) depended significantly on retaining post-operative improvements in HRQoL to the medium term (p<0.002 in 4 of 8 domains). Female long term survival (40.9%) was significantly less than male survival (p=0.0108) and depended on maintaining a steady upward trend in HRQoL over the medium term. Age was not a determinant in HRQoL following CABG. Long term male and female survival was not significantly different and approached those of age and gender matched samples from the general population. Conclusion:Strategies to improve HRQoL in women may support improved survival by reducing excess short term female mortality, but the effectiveness of the same strategy for men is less apparent.