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a Department of General Surgery, St. Thomas Hospital, Guys and St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
c Department of Anaesthesia, St. Thomas Hospital, Guys and St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
b Department of Respiratory Medicine, Guys Hospital, Guys and St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
Accepted for publication May 22, 2007.
* Address correspondence to Mr Mason, Guys and St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust, Lambeth Palace Rd, London, SE1 7EH, United Kingdom (Email: robert.mason{at}gstt.nhs.uk).
| Abstract |
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Methods: Between January 2004 and October 2006, 78 consecutive patients (64 men) with a median age of 65 years (range, 40 to 81 years) underwent CPX testing before esophagectomy (50% transhiatal; 50% transthoracic). Measured variables included anaerobic threshold (AT) and maximum oxygen uptake at peak exercise (
O
2peak). Outcome measures were postoperative morbidity and mortality, length of hospital stay, and unplanned intensive therapy unit admission.
Results: Cardiopulmonary complications occurred in 33 (42%) patients and noncardiopulmonary complications in 19 (24%). One in-hospital death (1.3%) occurred, and 13 patients (17%) required an unplanned intensive therapy unit admission. The level of
O
2peak was significantly lower in patients with postoperative cardiopulmonary morbidity (p = 0.04). The area under a receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.63 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.50 to 0.76) for the
O
2peak and 0.62 (95% CI, 0.49 to 0.75) for AT. An AT cutoff of 11 mL/kg/min was a poor predictor of postoperative cardiopulmonary morbidity.
Conclusions: Although the
O
2 peak was significantly lower in those patients who developed cardiopulmonary complications, CPX testing is of limited value in predicting postoperative cardiopulmonary morbidity in patients undergoing esophagectomy.
| Introduction |
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Major surgery has been shown to place severe stress on a patients cardiopulmonary reserve, requiring an increased oxygen demand of about 40% [4]. High-risk patients have traditionally been assessed using tests such as transthoracic echocardiography, dobutamine stress echocardiography, radionuclide ventriculography, and spirometry, although none of these have been validated as preoperative screening tests and most provide only static measures of cardiopulmonary performance [5–7]. A patients walking distance or ability to climb stairs has also been used as a subjective measure of exercise tolerance and has been shown to predict perioperative complications [8, 9]. The lack of objectivity and a failure to detect silent cardiopulmonary abnormalities remains a criticism of such subjective measures.
A dynamic assessment of a patients preoperative exercise capacity may therefore be a useful predictor of postoperative morbidity and mortality. Cardiopulmonary exercise (CPX) testing measures oxygen uptake at increasing levels of work and objectively determines the cardiopulmonary performance under conditions of stress, thereby closely mimicking the postoperative situation. The results from CPX testing have been applied to elderly patients undergoing major abdominal and thoracic surgical procedures, and it has been shown that virtually all postoperative cardiopulmonary deaths occur in patients with an exercise anaerobic threshold (AT) of less than 11 mL/min/kg [10, 11]. The AT results from individual patients have been used to develop postoperative treatment strategies to minimize the risk of morbidity and mortality. CPX testing has similarly been used to assess whether borderline patients should undergo surgical procedures for lung cancer [12, 13]. Results from several studies have shown that CPX testing is simple to perform, noninvasive, applicable to both inpatients and outpatients, cost-effective, and has a low incidence of adverse events [10, 11].
To date, one study has examined the usefulness of CPX testing in patients undergoing esophagectomy [14]. This study from Japan showed that the maximum oxygen uptake (
O
2max), but not the AT, correlated with postoperative cardiopulmonary complications after radical esophagectomy with a three-field lymphadenectomy. The purpose of our study was to assess the relationship between values obtained from CPX testing and the incidence of postoperative cardiopulmonary complications in patients undergoing esophagectomy.
| Patients and Methods |
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The standard preoperative work-up included clinical evaluation, routine blood tests, chest roentgenogram, electrocardiogram (ECG), and echocardiogram. Pulmonary function tests, exercise ECG, stress echocardiogram, and thallium myocardial perfusion scans were performed selectively as determined by clinical evaluation. CPX testing was additionally performed in all 78 patients at the Respiratory Laboratory at Guys Hospital. The underlying pathology in these 78 patients was adenocarcinoma in 58, squamous cell carcinoma in 13, adenosquamous carcinoma in 2, leiomyoma in 1, high-grade dysplasia in 3, and esophageal diverticulum in 1. According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification [15], operative risk was scored as ASA-I in 1 patient, ASA-II in 54, or ASA-III in 23.
A further 19 patients underwent CPX testing but did not undergo esophagectomy. This included 3 patients who were considered to be medically unfit on standard preoperative evaluation. CPX testing confirmed poor cardiopulmonary reserve (AT, 8.0 to 9.1 mL/min/kg;
O
2peak, 11.2 to 13.9 mL/min/kg), and an operation was not offered to these patients. Seven patients declined operation or were advised to have nonsurgical treatments such as chemoradiotherapy. Further staging investigations suggested unresectable disease in 3 patients. Six patients were found to have unresectable tumors at laparoscopy or laparotomy, and no resection was performed.
Fifty patients (64%) had received neoadjuvant chemotherapy, typically consisting of three cycles of combination epirubicin (50 mg/m2 bolus day 1), cisplatin (60 mg/m2 bolus day 1), and infusional 5-fluorouracil (200 mg/m2 per day) given during a 3-week period, broadly following the Medical Research Council Adjuvant Gastric Infusional Chemotherapy (MAGIC) trial protocol [16].
The operative approach was determined by the location of the tumor and the individual surgeons preference. The CPX values did not influence the operative approach. The types of operation performed included transhiatal esophagectomy in 39 patients, laparoscopic-assisted two-stage esophagectomy in 23, two-stage esophagectomy in 6, three-stage esophagectomy in 5, and left thoracoabdominal esophagectomy in 5. Postoperatively, all patients were kept intubated and ventilated overnight in the recovery unit, followed by extubation and discharge to a surgical high-dependency unit the next day.
Cardiopulmonary Exercise Tests
All CPX tests were performed in the Respiratory Function Unit at Guys Hospital with a doctor and full resuscitation equipment present. Between January 2004 and December 2005, the Medi-Soft Partnair 5400 system (MediSoft S.A., Dinant, Belguim) and Ergoline Ergometrics 900 cycle ergometer (Ergoline GmbH, Bitz, Germany) were used for the tests. From January 2006 onwards, the Med Graphics CPX Ultima system (Medical Graphics Corporation, St. Paul, MN) and Corvial cycle ergometer V2 (Lode BV, Groningen, The Netherlands) were used.
A standard maximum incremental exercise test was used, consisting of a 3-minute resting period, followed by 3 minutes of unloaded cycling and then by incremental increases in work rate until the patient became symptom-limited and could not continue or the test was stopped for safety reasons.
Breath-by-breath gas analysis was performed throughout all stages of the test, enabling the measurement of ventilation, oxygen uptake (
O
2), and carbon dioxide production. Oxygen saturations and 12-lead ECG were also monitored throughout, with blood pressure responses being measured at intervals.
The gas analysis obtained during the CPX test was used to calculate values for
O
2 peak and AT. The AT was calculated using the V-slope method [17] and confirmed using the ventilatory equivalents method [18]. The percentage predicted
O
2peak was calculated using standard formulas based on the patients age, sex, weight, and height [19].
The AT was indeterminate in 3 patients who did not exercise for long enough to reach AT, or estimation of AT was impossible due to irregular breathing patterns.
Outcome Measures
Length of hospital stay, unplanned ITU admission (defined as the need for unplanned reintubation and mechanical ventilation), and the outcome of the operation, including mortality and morbidity, were recorded. Postoperative morbidity was divided into cardiopulmonary and noncardiopulmonary complications. Cardiac and pulmonary complications were defined according to the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events [20]. Noncardiopulmonary complications included septic, anastomotic, and operative complications.
Statistical Methods
The CPX measurements were summarized as mean ± standard deviation for each outcome measure under study. Continuous variables were assessed by using the Student t test. Categoric variables were assessed by using the Fisher exact test. A value of p < 0.05 was regarded as significant. The relationship between length of hospital stay and CPX measurements was assessed by using linear regression. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted to assess the predictive value of CPX measurements. Statistical analysis was performed with GraphPad Prism 4.0 (GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA).
| Results |
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O
2peak in the 78 patients undergoing esophagectomy were 13.9 ± 2.9 and 20.5 ± 5.0 mL/min/kg, respectively. The mean percentage predicted
O
2peak was 83.0% ± 21.2%. There was no significant difference in the mean AT and
O
2peak according to operative approach: the transhiatal esophagectomy mean AT was 13.8 ± 3.0 mL/min/kg, and the mean
O
2peak was 20.2 ± 5.3 mL/min/kg; the transthoracic esophagectomy mean AT was 14.1 ± 2.7 mL/min/kg, and the mean
O
2peak was 21.3 ± 5.0 mL/min/kg. In patients undergoing esophagectomy, cardiopulmonary complications occurred in 33 (42%) and noncardiopulmonary in 19 (24%; Table 1), and 13 patients (17%) required unplanned ITU admission. The mean length of hospital stay was 19.7 ± 21.6 days (range, 8 to 191 days). Performing a thoracotomy or receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy did not produce any significant differences in the incidence of cardiopulmonary and noncardiopulmonary complications, unplanned ITU admission rates, or length of hospital stay.
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O
2peak, 20.1 mL/min/kg; AT, 15.1 mL/min/kg). Respiratory failure developed after a transhiatal esophagectomy and the patient required prolonged ITU admission and respiratory support. He died from a myocardial infarction on day 44.
Table 2
and Figures 1 and 2
summarize the differences in CPX variables according to the presence or absence of cardiopulmonary or noncardiopulmonary complications and unplanned ITU admission. The
O
2peak was significantly lower (p = 0.04), and there was a trend towards a lower AT (p = 0.07) in those patients with cardiopulmonary complications compared with those without. There was also a trend toward a lower AT (p = 0.07) in those with an unplanned ITU admission. No apparent correlation was evident between length of hospital stay and CPX measurements: r
2 values for AT and
O
2 peak were 0.054 and 0.063, respectively.
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O
2peak and AT as predictors of cardiopulmonary complications. The area under the ROC was 0.63 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.50 to 0.76; p = 0.02) for
O
2peak and 0.62 (95% CI, 0.49 to 0.75; p = 0.03) for AT, both of which were significantly greater than 0.5. Table 4
shows the positive and negative predictive probability of cardiopulmonary complications from CPX variables at a series of cutoffs. The positive and negative predictive values of both
O
2peak and AT were unhelpful over a series of cutoffs.
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| Comment |
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O
2peak, which is the maximum oxygen uptake at peak exercise. A related measurement,
O
2max, has previously been found to be the most useful predictor of postoperative cardiopulmonary complications both in patients undergoing radical esophagectomy with three-field lymphadenectomy [14] and after surgical procedures for lung cancer [21–25].
Also assessed was the AT, which is defined as the point during exercise at which oxygen demand outstrips oxygen delivery and metabolism starts to become anaerobic. AT is a measure of the ability of the cardiopulmonary system to deliver adequate oxygen to tissues and has the advantage of being independent of patient motivation, does not require high levels of physical stress, and occurs well before the
O
2peak [19]. The AT has been assessed predominantly in relation to major surgical procedures in elderly patients, allowing the development of an operative risk grading and treatment protocol [10, 11]. An AT cut off of 11 mL/min/kg is internationally recognized and is currently being used to select patients in enhanced recovery programs for colorectal surgery. To date, the AT has not been found to be useful in the assessment of cardiopulmonary fitness of patients undergoing exclusively esophagectomy [14].
We have demonstrated that there is a significantly reduced
O
2peak (p = 0.04) and a nonsignificant trend to a reduced AT (p = 0.07) in those patients in whom postoperative cardiopulmonary complications develop after esophagectomy. We also found a nonsignificant trend to a reduced AT (p = 0.07) in those patients who had an unplanned postoperative admission to the ITU.
When AT and
O
2peak were analyzed by ROC curves, both had an area under the curve that was significantly different from 0.5 (p = 0.02 and p = 0.03, respectively), indicating that they both had a predictive value in determining which patients would subsequently present with cardiopulmonary complications. The actual values for the area under the curve for both of these tests were small (0.63 and 0.62, respectively), however, suggesting that in this group of patients, CPX indicators did not perform well as clinically useful tests for predicting postoperative cardiopulmonary complications. Furthermore, having an AT of less than 11 mL/min/kg, a cutoff suggested by Older and colleagues [10, 11], did not predict which patients would subsequently present with postoperative cardiopulmonary complications or require an unplanned ITU admission or increased length of hospital stay.
Why has this study failed to show a stronger correlation between the results of CPX testing and cardiopulmonary complications, as has been suggested by other studies? First, with only one in-hospital death (1.3%), mortality could not be used as an outcome measure in this study. Although we used standardized criteria for reporting cardiopulmonary complications, many studies have not defined their criteria used for reporting postoperative complications.
Second, a much smaller proportion of patients (16%) with an AT of less than 11 mL/min/kg underwent operation in the current study compared with previous studies, such as 29% in the one by Older and colleagues [10]. This suggests that higher-risk patients were not considered for resection by the surgeons and that the surgical cohort was therefore by definition a fitter group. However, there was no evidence of bias towards a particular operative approach on the basis of CPX test results. Formal measures of preoperative risk analysis have previously been shown to significantly reduce mortality rates from esophagectomy [26, 27].
Third, patients with primary cardiopulmonary complications, which should hopefully have been detected by CPX testing, were not separated from patients with cardiopulmonary complications secondary to noncardiopulmonary complications such as anastomotic leakage, sepsis, and multiorgan failure, which could not have been predicted by CPX testing.
Fourth, all patients at our institution were kept intubated and ventilated in a level 3 area (equivalent to ITU) for the first night after their esophagectomy. In the study by Older and colleagues [10], caring for high-risk patients (identified though having an AT < 11 mL/min/kg) in a level 3 environment reduced their mortality compared with controls cared for in a regular surgical ward. Thus, any increased risk in our patients with an AT of less than 11 mL/min/kg may have been masked by postoperative fluid optimization and respiratory support occurring in all patients in the level 3 environment, thus protecting them against developing complications.
In conclusion, we have demonstrated that although there was a reduction in measured CPX indicators in those patients who presented with postoperative cardiopulmonary complications after esophagectomy, these same indicators did not perform well as tests for predicting the development of cardiopulmonary complications when assessed by using a ROC curve. The results generated from this study merit further investigation in a larger population, multicenter study with mortality or "failure to rescue" rates as the primary end point. This will allow definitive conclusions to be drawn on the role of CPX testing in esophageal surgery.
| Acknowledgments |
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| References |
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This article has been cited by other articles:
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J. M. Prentis, D. Randles, and C. Snowden The importance of cardiopulmonary exercise testing in the prediction of surgical risk: letter 2. Ann. Thorac. Surg., February 1, 2009; 87(2): 671 - 671. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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A. Hall and P. Older Cardiopulmonary exercise testing accurately predicts risk of major surgery including esophageal resection: letter 1. Ann. Thorac. Surg., February 1, 2009; 87(2): 670 - 671. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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M. J. Forshaw, D. C. Strauss, A. R. Davies, D. Wilson, B. Lams, A. Pearce, A. J. Botha, and R. C. Mason Reply. Ann. Thorac. Surg., February 1, 2009; 87(2): 671 - 672. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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C. M. Danbury, S. O'Neill, A. Kitching, P. Murray, and (on behalf of the authors) Preoperative cardiopulmonary exercise testing Br. J. Anaesth., May 1, 2008; 100(5): 726 - 726. [Full Text] [PDF] |
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