This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Author home page(s): Claudius Diez Hans-Stefan Hofmann Permission Requests Google Scholar Articles by Diez, C. Articles by Hofmann, H.-S. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Diez, C. Articles by Hofmann, H.-S. Related Collections Related Article

Using EuroSCORE to select patients for prophylactic IABP

Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, University Regensburg, Regensburg 93053, Germany

EuroSCORE directed intraaortic balloon pump placement in high-risk patients undergoing cardiac surgery – retrospective analysis of 267 patients

We thank Dr. Healy for his valuable comment on our study [1]. He addressed the issue of the risk to benefit ratio in the patients receiving an IABP. We completely agree with him about using a preoperative risk calculator to define high-risk patients and their potential outcome. Since the definitions may differ from one center to another, the results of studies prove to be difficult to reproduce. Apart from our retrospective study, we conducted a prospective, randomized trial to determine the effects of preoperative IABP insertion on mortality. We still analyze the data and hope to present the results within the next months. In this study, the population with preoperative IABP insertion is going to be analyzed based on their EuroSCORE, as suggested by Dr. Healy. It is a clear drawback of our current study not to have done this. We also agree that the analysis of intra- and postoperative IABP placement might be a distraction from the main question.

Indeed, our data might easily be misunderstood. The sample comprised 175 patients with IABP insertion. Eighty-five of those patients received the balloon for weaning. According to a reviewer's suggestion, we included a similar (‘pseudomatched’) control group (92 patients) without any IABP support. However, this number did not reflect the total number of patients operated on during the study period (>3000) and thus the overall frequency of an IABP insertion is much lower as assumed by Dr. Healy.

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1. Diez C, Silber RE, Wachner M, Stiller M, Hofmann HS. EuroSCORE directed intraaortic balloon pump placement in high-risk patients undergoing cardiac surgery – retrospective analysis of 267 patients. Interact CardioVasc Thorac Surg 2008;7:389–397.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Author home page(s): Claudius Diez Hans-Stefan Hofmann Permission Requests Google Scholar Articles by Diez, C. Articles by Hofmann, H.-S. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Diez, C. Articles by Hofmann, H.-S. Related Collections Related Article