Is Time on our Side? The Influence of Time Span between Initial and Redo Cardiac Surgery on Pericardial Adhesions, Preparation Time, and Postoperative Outcome after Reoperation

Background: Reoperative cardiac surgeries comprise a constant portion of the current cardiac surgical practice constituting 8 to 9% of all cardiac surgical procedures in Germany and may be associated with increased risk of perioperative injury and operation time due to pericardial adhesions to greater or lesser extent. Some cardiac surgeons express the suspicion that the severity of these adhesions decreases with increasing time interval between the primary sternotomy the sternal reentry (interval time). We aimed to objectify these assumptions by determining the influence of interval time on redo operative parameters and outcome.