European Society of Cardiology quality indicators for the cardiovascular pre-operative assessment and management of patients considered for non-cardiac surgery. Developed in collaboration with the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care.

AIMS: To establish a set of quality indicators (QIs) for the cardiovascular (CV) assessment and management of patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery (NCS). METHODS AND RESULTS: The Quality Indicator Committee of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) in collaboration with Task Force members of the 2022 ESC Guidelines on CV assessment and management of patients undergoing NCS followed the ESC methodology for QI development. This included (1) identification, by constructing a conceptual framework of care, of domains of the CV assessment, and management of patients with risk factors or established cardiovascular disease (CVD) who are considered for or undergoing NCS, (2) development of candidate QIs following a systematic literature review, (3) selection of the final set of QIs using a modified Delphi method, and (4) evaluation of the feasibility of the developed QIs. In total, eight main and nine secondary QIs were selected across six domains: (1) structural framework (written policy), (2) patient education and quality of life (CV risk discussion), (3) peri-operative risk assessment (indication for diagnostic tests), (4) peri-operative risk mitigation (use of hospital therapies), (5) follow-up (post-discharge assessment), and (6) outcomes (major CV events). CONCLUSION: We present the 2022 ESC/ESAIC QIs for the CV assessment and management of patients with risk factors or established CVD who are considered for or are undergoing NCS y. These indicators are supported by evidence from the literature, underpinned by expert consensus, and align with the 2022 ESC Guidelines on CV assessment and management of patients undergoing NCS.

History of previous bleeding and C-reactive protein improve assessment of bleeding risk in elderly patients (≥ 80 years) with myocardial infarction.

We aimed to assess whether the CRUSADE risk score represents a robust instrument for stratification of bleeding risk in elderly myocardial infarction (MI) patients (≥ 80 years) and further aimed to identify age-specific predictors of major bleeding events. Binary logistic regression models were applied to assess the effect of variables on the occurrence of bleeding events during hospital stay. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the discriminatory power. Out of 387 patients in the final study cohort, 74 patients (19.1 %) experienced a major bleeding event according to the definition of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis. The CRUSADE risk score demonstrated only a weak discriminatory power to predict bleeding in this group of patients (area under the ROC curve: 0.57 [0.51-0.65]; p=0.05). In the multivariate regression analysis, history of bleeding with an adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 3.21 (95 % confidence interval: 1.29-8.03, p=0.01) and C-reactive protein with an adjusted HR per increase of 10 mg/l of 1.05 (1.01-1.10) were independent predictors of major bleeding. Integration of both variables into the CRUSADE score demonstrated a significantly improved performance for bleeding as indicated by a significant increase in the ROC analysis (area under the curve: 0.64 vs 0.57; for comparison p< 0.045), net reclassification index (35.6 %; p=0.006) and integrated discrimination increment (0.0242; p=0.02). In conclusion, bleeding history and C-reactive protein significantly improve the modest predictive power of the CRUSADE risk score in elderly patients with MI. These results point towards a specific risk profile for bleeding events in this high-risk group of patients.