Surgical site wound infection, and other postoperative problems after coronary artery bypass grafting in subjects with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A meta‐analysis

We performed a meta‐analysis to evaluate the effect of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on surgical site wound infection, and other postoperative problems after coronary artery bypass grafting. A systematic literature search up to April 2022 was performed and 37 444 subjects with coronary artery bypass grafting at the baseline of the studies; 4320 of them were with the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and 33 124 were without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Odds ratio (OR), and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the effect of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on surgical site wound infection, and other postoperative problems after coronary artery bypass grafting using the dichotomous, and contentious methods with a random or fixed‐effect model. The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease subjects had a significantly higher surgical site wound infection (OR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.01‐1.60, P = 0.04), respiratory failure (OR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.55‐2.18, P < 0.001), mortality (OR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.37‐1.89, P < 0.001), pneumonia (OR, 2.30; 95% CI, 1.97‐2.68, P < 0.001), pleural effusion (OR, 1.78; 95% CI, 1.12‐2.83, P = 0.02), stroke (OR, 1.99; 95% CI, 1.17‐3.36, P = 0.01), and length of intensive care unit stay (MD, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.19‐1.26, P = 0.008) after coronary artery bypass grafting compared with subjects without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. However, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease subjects did not show any significant difference in length of hospital stay (MD, 0.83; 95% CI, −0.01 to 1.67, P = 0.05), and pneumothorax (OR, 1.59; 95% CI, 0.98‐2.59, P = 0.06) after coronary artery bypass grafting compared with subjects without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease subjects had a significantly higher surgical site wound infection, respiratory failure, mortality, pneumonia, pleural effusion, stroke, and length of intensive care unit stay, and no significant difference in length of hospital stay, and pneumothorax after coronary artery bypass grafting compared with subjects without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The analysis of outcomes should be with caution because of the low sample size of 1 out of 11 studies in the meta‐analysis and a low number of studies in certain comparisons.