Author`s Reply.

To the Editor,

We are pleased with the authors’ interest in our article titled “SYNTAX score predicts postoperative atrial fibrillation in patients undergoing on-pump isolated coronary artery bypass grafting surgery” that is published in Anatolian J Cardiol October 18. Epub ahead of print (1), and we would like to thank them for their contribution. As the authors have mentioned, the prolongation of ischemic time increases the risk of postoperative atrial fibrillation (PoAF). Mathew et al. (2) have reported that the pump and cross-clamp times during coronary bypass surgery predict PoAF. However, the cross-clamp and bypass times were not included in our patient data, and we believe that the patient population was too small to add these variables in the analysis; there would be too many variables for a small group and this fact could disrupt the results. With the inclusion of these data, our hypothesis can be further tested in a bigger patient population.