Canonical Correlation Analysis of Risk Factors and Clinical Outcomes in Cardiac Surgery

Abstract

Assessment of the association between risk factors and outcomes in cardiac surgery is a complex problem. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between possible risk factors and several clinical outcomes in cardiac surgery by using canonical correlation analysis (CCA). This retrospective study of 2605 consecutive adult patients who underwent cardiac surgery, evaluated 74 potential risk factors and up to 12 outcomes by canonical correlation analysis. For three serious outcomes, sternal wound complications/mediastinitis, cerebral complications, and perioperative myocardial infarctions, CCA was preceded by univariate analyses and backward stepwise multivariate logistic regression analyses. The CCA suggests that the major risk factors for complications in these models are intraoperative and postoperative risk factors. The power of risk prediction models developed with multivariate regression analysis can be enhanced by application of canonical correlation analysis, thereby offering new ways of analyzing and interpreting sets of potential risk factors in relation to sets of clinical outcomes.

Surgical site infections—economic consequences for the health care system

“…The DSWI infection rate after open heart surgery of at least 1.8% as determined in our facility is in line with earlier reported rates of 0.5% through 3.2% [24,25]. The choice of inclusion criteria for cases in our case-control study also fits the patient characteristics as defined by others before [26][27][28][29]. Thus, we believe that our data are both valid and representative.…”

Economic aspects of deep sternal wound infections☆

“…Such a DSWI rate of 1.8% is in line with the earlier reported rates of 0.5% and 3.2% [4,5]. Inclusion criteria for patients in our case-control study are in accordance to the criteria and characteristics as used by others before [11][12][13][14].…”

Deep Surgical Site Infections after Open Radical Cystectomy and Urinary Diversion Significantly Increase Hospitalisation Time and Total Treatment Costs

“…Inclusion criteria for patients in our case-control study are in accordance with the criteria used by other study groups mainly in the field of cardiac surgery [23][24][25][26] . Broex et al [27] found that SSI is responsible for a substantial increase of health care-related costs (up to twice the costs of a patient without SSI), mainly due to increased LOH.…”