[Current operative risk in emergency coronary surgery. Experience of the last 5 years].

Technique of fibrinolysis and angioplasty have changed the face of emergency coronary artery surgery, which had developed considerably over recent years. Between 1982 and 1986, in the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery of the University Hospital of Rennes, 1,232 patients underwent isolated coronary artery revascularisation (with the exclusion of mechanical complications of infarction). 1,040 patients were operated electively and 192 patients underwent emergency surgery with very different results: mortality of 2.4% with elective surgery versus 12.5% with emergency surgery, divided into four subgroups: revascularisation after thrombolysis (gradually being replaced by angioplasty), by-pass surgery after a complication of angioplasty (or coronary angiography), by-pass surgery in threatened unresponsive infarction (now less common), by-pass surgery in the context of threatened extension of pre-existing myocardial infraction. The factors of mortality are analysed according to the circumstances (emergency, presence or absence of haemodynamic repercussions), clinical context (age, sex, previous infarction, myocardial function) and lastly the surgical possibilities (complete or incomplete revascularisation in vessels of variable quality ...). In relation to this last point, the authors stress the limitations of reasonable indications for emergency surgery, although surgery is readily proposed in deteriorating patients unresponsive to medical treatment, on vessels with a severely pathological disal bed and in myocardia with severely altered ventricular function.