Early and Late Survival of On-Pump Cardiac Surgery Patients Formerly Affected by Lymphoma

BACKGROUND: Survival after cardiac surgery of patients formerly affected by lymphoma has not been well defined. METHODS: Forty-five consecutive patients having prior Hodgkin's (HL patients, n=26) or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (non-HL patients, n=19) underwent on-pump cardiac surgery at the authors' institution (2001-2016). Ischaemic, valvular, and ischaemic plus valvular heart disease were present in 14, 13, and 18 patients, respectively. Concomitant aortic disease was treated in three cases. The expected operative risk was calculated by the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) II. The 10-year survival was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). The Cox proportional-hazards regression was used to evaluate the effect of some risk factors on survival. RESULTS: With respect to non-HL patients, HL patients were younger (mean age, 52.5 vs. 64.7 years, p=0.0017) and underwent cardiac surgery later after lymphoma occurrence (median gap, 21.5 vs. 9.6 years, p=0.0079). No other intergroup differences as baseline characteristics, risk profiles (median EuroSCORE II, 2.3% vs. 3%, p=0.78), and in-hospital mortality (7.7% vs. 10.5%, p=0.99) were found. Older age, severe left ventricular dysfunction, and HL history were predictors of cardiac or cerebrovascular death (p<0.1). The 10-year, crude (40.4%) and adjusted (39.1%) nonparametric estimates of survival were lower than the expected survival by CCI (77.5%, p<0.0001). The 10-year nonparametric estimate of freedom from malignancy was 66.3%. CONCLUSIONS: Immediate and long-term survival after on-pump cardiac surgery of patients formerly affected by lymphoma were worse than expected, according to universally used predictive scoring systems. There was an increased risk of malignant tumour.