Aim: The present analysis was performed to determine whether sex influenced late outcome and mode of death in a cohort of CR patients.
Methods: This was a observational cohort study of 2263 patients (1967 males-296 females, mean age 61.7 ± 18 and 65.4 ± 8.6 years, respectively) who had undergone CABG and/or PTCA in an area with defined population (350 000, 50% female) in 1983–2000. Of these, 1312 men and 184 women had undergone CABG. Only patients discharged from the hospital and being alive for 1 month were eligible for the study. Clinical follow-up was completed for all patients. Mean follow-up (day of last examination or death confirmed) was 6 years (range 1–16 years) and was similar for both sexes. The causes of death were based on the hospital records, coroner's reports, statistics services, family physicians and/or relatives of the patients.
Results: During the follow-up 159 (8%) males and 17 (5.7) women died. One hundred and nineteen (67.6%) deaths were due to cardiovascular causes. Of these, 47 males/3 females (42%) died suddenly (within 1 h of the onset of acute symptoms) and 42 (eight female) from cir-culature failure in-hospital. Other causes of death were stroke (five), aortic aneurysm dissection (three), constrictive pericarditis (four), and during a second intervention (15). The non-cardiovascular deaths were due to neoplasms (25), accidents (two), infections (four) and unclassified (26).
Conclusions: Our population-based data show that women after CR have comparable rates of mortality with men. Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death for both sexes, but men are more likely to die suddenly than women from circulature failure.
