Delaying heart surgery increases preoperative mortality for patients deemed “less urgent”

What is it about?

We evaluated whether longer delays contribute to the probability of death before surgery among patients prioritized into the less urgent category.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Queuing according to urgency of treatment contributed to a higher proportion of CABG candidates dying before surgery from all causes in the nonurgent compared with the semiurgent group despite similar weekly death rates observed in both groups.