Background: The preoperative presence of diabetes mellitus (DM) has been recently demonstrated to be a risk factor for adverse events after thoracic surgery. However, the specific effects of presence of DM preoperatively on thoracic surgery is not known. This study aimed to investigate the association between preoperative DM and clinical outcomes and the short-term survival rates after thoracic surgery.
Methods: In this retrospective, observational, and matched-pair analysis study, patients receiving thoracic surgery from a tertiary university hospital in 2 consecutive years were grouped as either type 2 DM (T2DM) or controlled within the first 24 hours after surgery. Multivariate Cox regression was conducted to investigate the impact of T2DM within the first 24 hours of admission on in-intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital survival.
Results: Among the included thoracic patients, 41 (8.4%) had T2DM and 450 (91.6%) did not have T2DM. In the single-factor analyses, T2DM patients were shown to have a higher preoperative white blood cells (WBCs) count, increased release of immunoglobulin A, complement C3 and C4, impaired kidney function with high level of urea, and low expression of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and monoamine oxidase (MAO). In multivariate analyses, the preoperative urea level was associated with a low-grade risk of dying for the ICU survival time. In contrast, preoperative complement C3 level favored a positive contribution in-ICU survival. Besides the complement C3 level, immunoglobulin A level remained a positive contribution in regression models of hospital survival.
Conclusions: Pre-admission T2DM was not associated with an increased in-ICU and hospital mortality among patients with thoracic surgery. Furthermore, they were accompanied by impaired kidney function, activated inflammation and liver function.
Keywords: Diabetes mellitus (DM); one-lung ventilation (OLV); survival; thoracic surgery.