June 13, 2012. The results of a study presented at the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Paris on January 9, 2012 suggest that aspirin consumed during five days prior to heart surgery could reduce the number of cases of post-operative acute kidney failure by 50 percent. Acute renal failure or injury is a frequent complication following cardiac surgery which lowers the chances of survival. “It significantly increases hospital stay, the incidence of other complications and mortality," explained Jianzhong Sun, MD, PhD, of Thomas Jefferson University, who presented the finding. "From previous reports, up to 30% of patients who undergo cardiac surgery develop acute renal failure. In our studies, about 16-40% of cardiac surgery patients developed it in various degrees, depending upon how their kidneys were functioning before the operation. Despite intensive studies we don't understand yet why kidney failure can develop after cardiac surgery, but possible mechanisms could involve inflammatory and neurohormonal factors, reduced blood supply, reperfusion injury, kidney toxicity and/or their combinations."The study compared 2,247 patients who consumed aspirin within five days before cardiac surgery to 972 who did not use the drug. While 6.7 percent of those who did not use aspirin developed acute renal failure, the condition occurred in only 3.8 percent of aspirin users. "Thus, the results of this clinical study showed that preoperative therapy with aspirin is associated with preventing about an extra three cases of acute renal failure per 100 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft or/and valve surgery," stated Dr Sun.
"Looking back and ahead, I believe we can say that aspirin is really a wonder drug, and its wide applications and multiple benefits are truly beyond what we could expect and certainly worthy of further studies both in bench and bedside research," he remarked.
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