Heart surgery fever linked to cognitive problems

By Robert Cervin, | Health | 0 Comments

A study shows that having a fever after a heart bypass operation often heralds later cognitive problems.
It’s not uncommon for people to have a slight fever after heart bypass surgery. It’s likely caused by inflammation in response to the injury of surgery. Doctors tend to dismiss the symptom as unimportant. But they may be wrong, say researchers at Duke University in the US.

They studied a group of 300 patients about to undergo heart bypass, giving them a set of mental function tests before and six weeks later. They also had their temperatures taken regularly for a 24 hour period after surgery.

Those who had elevated temperatures post-operatively were more likely to fall down on the later cognitive tests. The researchers don’t know if the fever causes the cognitive problems - which have been noted before after bypass surgery - or if there’s some common factor causing both fever and cognitive decline. It may be that in some patients, the surgery causes slight brain damage that’s made worse by fever. More research is needed, but it may be that there’s a case for keeping a patient cool after a bypass operation.