Abstract
Background: Brazil is an upper-middle-income country in South America
with the world’s sixth largest population. Little is known on the
volume, outcomes and trends of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in
Brazil’s public health system. Objective: The aim of this study was to
evaluate the outcome of CABG in the public health system in from January
2008 to December 2017 through the database DATASUS. Methods: This study
is based on publicly available material obtained from DATASUS, the
Brazilian Ministry of Health’s data processing system, on numbers of
surgical procedures, death rates, length of stay, and costs. Only
isolated CABG procedures were included in our study. We used the TabNet
software from the DATASUS website to generate reports. Chi-square test
was used to compare death rates. A p-value of <0.05 was
considered statistically significant. Results: We identified 226,697
CABG procedures performed from January 2008 to December 2017. The
overall in-hospital mortality over the 10-year period was 5.7%. We
observed statistically significant differences in death rates between
the five Brazilian macro regions. Death rates by state ranged from 2.6%
to 13.1%. The national average mortality rate remained stable over the
course of time. Conclusion: Over 10 years, a high volume of CABG was
performed in the Brazilian Public Health System with significant
differences in mortality, number of procedures, and distribution of
surgeries by region. Future databases involving all centers that perform
CABG and carry out risk-adjusted analysis will help improve Brazilian
results, and enable policymakers to adopt appropriate health care
policies for greater transparency and accountability.