Posted on 6/4/2018
Each year in the U.S., more than 300,000 people have heart surgery. To reduce risk of stroke for their patients, surgeons often will close the left atrial appendage, which is a small sac in the left side of the heart where many blood clots form, during these surgeries. Mayo Clinic researchers report in JAMA that adding this procedure is likely the right choice for certain patients but not all.
"Our study showed that this intervention is associated with reduced risks of stroke and mortality," says Xiaoxi Yao, PhD, a health services researcher at Mayo Clinic and the study's first author. "This is especially true for patients with pre-existing atrial fibrillation, who are at a particularly high risk of stroke."
To reach these conclusions, Yao and her research ...