Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are at high risk for cardiac disease requiring surgery, and have been shown to have increased surgical risks. There have been significant improvements in ESRD management, surgical techniques, and patient selection over the past 10 y. We evaluated rates of serious postoperative outcomes in stable, well-dialyzed patients with ESRD undergoing nonemergent cardiac surgery compared to the general cardiac surgery population.

In this propensity-score matched study, we evaluated 1451 adult patients who underwent nonemergent cardiac surgery at the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) between 2011 and 2016. Patients with ESRD were compared to nonESRD patients. The primary outcome was a composite endpoint, including 30-d mortality, stroke, postoperative infection, and prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay (LOS).

A total of 35 patients with ESRD met inclusion criteria. These select patients were younger with few comorbidities than the nonESRD population. There were no statistically significant differences in the composite outcome between ESRD and nonESRD patients in the propensity-matched analysis (OR 0.70, CI 0.29-1.72, P = 0.44). There were no significant differences or trends for in-hospital mortality, postoperative stroke, infection, ICU LOS, or hospital LOS between the patients with and without ESRD.

Stable ESRD patients undergoing nonemergent surgery are not at increased risk of major postoperative complications when compared to those without ESRD. Well-compensated ESRD patients should not be excluded from surgical consideration.