Michigan: Women and men experience similar rates of serious complications after heart surgery, but women have a higher mortality rate than men.
That’s the main question raised by a new study that included more than 850,000 cases of Medicare beneficiaries who underwent high-risk heart surgery.
These operations included heart bypass, aortic aneurysm repair and mitral and aortic valve repair. All these were done between 2015 and 2020.
A team led by Dr. Kathryn Wagner of breast surgery at the University of Michigan Health found that about 15 percent of male and female patients experienced postoperative complications.
The team found that 8.6% of men who experienced these complications died, but that number rose to 10.7% in women.
