Associations of Intraoperative Radial Arterial Systolic, Diastolic, Mean, and Pulse Pressures with Myocardial and Acute Kidney Injury after Noncardiac Surgery

Abstract Editor’s Perspective What We Already Know about This Topic What This Article Tells Us That Is New Background Arterial pressure is a complex signal that can be characterized by systolic, mean, and diastolic components, along with pulse pressure (difference between systolic and diastolic pressures). The authors separately evaluated the strength of associations among intraoperative pressure components with myocardial and kidney injury after noncardiac surgery. Methods The authors included 23,140 noncardiac surgery patients at Cleveland Clinic who had blood pressure recorded at 1-min intervals from radial arterial catheters. The authors used univariable smoothing and multivariable logistic regression to estimate probabilities of each outcome as function of patients’ lowest pressure for a cumulative 5 min for each component, comparing discriminative ability using C-statistics. The authors further assessed the association between outcomes and both area and minutes under derived thresholds corresponding to the beginning of increased risk for the average patient. Results Out of 23,140 patients analyzed, myocardial injury occurred in 6.1% and acute kidney injury in 8.2%. Based on the lowest patient blood pressure experienced for greater than or equal to 5 min, estimated thresholds below which the odds of myocardial or kidney injury progressively increased (slope P < 0.001) were 90 mmHg for systolic, 65 mmHg for mean, 50 mmHg for diastolic, and 35 mmHg for pulse pressure. Weak discriminative ability was noted between the pressure components, with univariable C-statistics ranging from 0.55 to 0.59. Area under the curve in the highest (deepest) quartile of exposure below the respective thresholds had significantly higher odds of myocardial injury after noncardiac surgery and acute kidney injury compared to no exposure for systolic, mean, and pulse pressure (all P < 0.001), but not diastolic, after adjusting for confounding. Conclusions Systolic, mean, and pulse pressure hypotension were comparable in their strength of association with myocardial and renal injury. In contrast, the relationship with diastolic pressure was poor. Baseline factors were much more strongly associated with myocardial and renal injury than intraoperative blood pressure, but pressure differs in being modifiable.