Time dependence of defibrillator benefit postcoronary revascularization.

MACEs in the early-surgery group occurred in patients in whom antiplatelet therapy was discontinued, including 3 events in the 17 patients with bare-metal stents in whom antiplatelet therapy was discontinued and 2 events in 9 patients with drug-eluting stents without antiplatelet therapy. In contrast to our findings, Reddy et al. (5) did not show an association between discontinuation of antiplatelet therapy and perioperative MACEs in 56 patients with prior bare-metal stenting. This might have been attributable to the small number of events in their study. The small number of events is also a limitation of the current study. Multivariate analysis could not be performed because of this small number. However, the difference found between those patients who continued their antiplatelet therapy and those who did not deserves attention, and, until more evidence is available, antiplatelet therapy during surgery should be continued unless there is an absolute contraindication.