Coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) is the most commonly performed heart operation in most countries, and its mortality and morbidity results are one of the most studied and scrutinized in the world. As a large operation involving long surgical times, sternotomy and cardiopulmonary bypass, long-term postoperative ventilation is a dreaded possible complication. Failure to wean from the ventilator can result both as a consequence of previous risk factors and as a cause of future morbidity and mortality. Not only it impacts patients’ well-being and recovery times, but also can lead to further complications such as lung infections, sepsis, loss of general muscle function and need for tracheostomy.

Therefore, the current study of Dallazen-Sartori et al. is a timely and useful attempt to better characterize the incidence and risk factors for the development of prolonged ventilation (PV) after CABG. As previous authors did before, the authors focus on preoperative and per-operative factors to try to expose, by multiple logistic regressions, which ones are causally associated to PV in order to construct a practical Risk Score. It is needless to stress the importance of such a study in our Brazilian population, which might behave differently from well-known previous reports from other countries. Unfortunately, we still face a paucity of local and regional studies that would better represent our own results, outcomes and challenges. The situation when we need to base our decisions in external sources of data instead of using the national one happens very often. The current study by Dallazen-Sartori et al, is an attempt to change that.

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