Article Text
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Commentary on:
Implications for practice and research
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Cardiac surgery patients are at risk of postoperative pulmonary complications.
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The incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications varies in the literature, because of inconsistent definitions for postoperative pulmonary complication.
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More large-scale randomised controlled trials are needed to determine the value of preoperative physical therapy in cardiac surgery patients.
Context
Postoperative pulmonary complications are a common cause of morbidity and mortality after cardiac surgery. The reasons for the lung function impairment are multifactorial and include anaesthesia, cardiopulmonary bypass, the surgery itself, analgesia and postoperative immobility. The reported incidence varies in the literature, depending on the specific criteria used for the definition of a postoperative pulmonary complication and the diagnostic techniques used to detect them. Efforts have been made to identify those patients who have a higher risk of …
Footnotes
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Correction notice This article has been corrected since it was published Online First. Affiliation 1 has been corrected to ‘School of Health and Medical Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden’.
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Competing interests None.