MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Adrian Baranchuk MD FACC FRCPC
Associate Professor of Medicine
Director, EP Training Program Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Baranchuk: In this study, we investigated whether obstructive sleep apnea increases the risk of atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery. We found the risk to increase by approximately two-fold for patients with obstructive sleep apnea, suggesting that this disease is a strong predictor of atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery.
We also found that the risk increases in patients with more severe obstructive sleep apnea.
This is an important association to explore since
atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery increases patient mortality, the risk of stroke, hospital stay, healthcare costs, and has substantial burden on patients and their families. It is also a common complication of the surgery, occurring in up to half of the patients. Knowing which factors increase its risk gives us a better understanding of how to manage it and mitigate its negative consequences.
Marta Yanina Pepino PhD
Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition
College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Our study is not the first to look at whether sleeve gastrectomy affects alcohol absorption and metabolism. Before our study, there were three published studies in the literature on this issue. However, findings from these studies were discrepant. Two of the studies found that sleeve gastrectomy did not affect blood alcohol levels and one of the studies did found that peak blood alcohol levels were higher when people drink after having a sleeve gastrectomy. All these three studies used a breathalyzer to estimate blood alcohol levels.
Our study tested the following two related hypothesis.
First, that similar to Roux-en-Y- gastric bypass (RYGB), sleeve gastrectomy accelerates alcohol absorption, which cause peak blood alcohol levels to be higher and much faster than before surgery. Because the breathalyzer requires a 15 min of waiting time between drinking the last sip of alcohol and the time that you can read a good estimate of blood alcohol levels from the breath, we hypothesized that the breathalyzer was not a good technique to estimate peak blood alcohol levels in people who may reach a peak blood alcohol level before those 15 min have passed, such as people who underwent sleeve gastrectomy or RYGB.
We found these two hypothesis to be truth:
1) Sleeve gastrectomy, similar to RYGB, can double blood alcohol levels; and
2) The breathalyzer technique is invalid to assess effects of gastric surgeries on pharmacokinetics of ingested alcohol (it underestimate blood alcohol levels by ~27% and it may miss peak blood alcohol levels).
