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-pumping isolated coronary artery bypass grafting surgery,” which was published in Anatol J Cardiol 2015 Nov 18 Epub ahead of print (1), and we would like to thank them for their contribution. As the authors have mentioned systemic inflammation caused by cardiopulmonary bypass, atrial inflammation might contribute to the occurrence of postoperative atrial fibrillation (PoAF). Bruins et al. (2) reported that an elevation in C-reactive protein-complement complexes was greater in patients who developed AF. Soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) is an emerging biomarker for inflammation and endothelial activation. In another study, Verdejo et al. (3) reported that in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery, elevated VCAM-1 levels predict a higher risk for PoAF. However, inflammatory markers were not included in our patient data, and we think that the patient population is too small to add these variables in the analysis. There would be too many variables for a small group, and this could disrupt the results. With the inclusion of these data, our hypothesis can be further tested in a bigger patient population.