Renal dysfunction is a serious complication that sometimes occurs after on-pump coronary artery bypass grafting. Recently, the off-pump coronary artery bypass (OPCAB) is used. We investigated whether this practice can reduce renal compromise.

Eighty patients underwent CABG surgery between March 2001 and March 2002. Among these, 50 patients received CABG with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) and 30 patients received OPCAB. The data collected included age, gender, history of diabetes, history of hypertension, history of congestive heart failuere, preoperative serum creatinine (PreCr) level, peak postoperative serum creatinine (Peak PostCr) level, preoperative and postoperative left ventriclular ejection fraction, preoperative ACE inhibitor use, perioperative angiography with contrast dye. Perioperative changes in creatinine clearance (DCrCl) were calculated using changes in the pre and postoperative serum creatinine values. Moderate postoperative renal dysfuntion was defined as a peak postoperative creatinine value of greater than 1.5 times and below 2.0 times the preoperative creatinine value. Severe postoperative renal dysfunction was defined as a peak postoperative creatinine of more than twice the preoperative creatinine value.

Moderate renal dysfunction was observed in 10% of patients in the on-pump group and in 17.6% of the patients in the off-pump group. Severe renal dysfunction was observed in 6.7% of patients in the on-pump group and in 5.9% of the patients in the 0ff-pump group. Multivariate liner regression analysis showed that the preoperative and immediate postoperative creatinine clearance are associated with postoperative renal dysfuntion in both groups.

In this retrospective study, we could not confirm that OPCAB reduces perioperative renal dysfunction more so than CABG with CPB. Diabetes was found to be significantly associated with postoperative renal dysfunction in CABG with CPB.