Cardiac surgery during wartime in Israel
Eitan Keizman, Tamer Jamal, Irena Sarantsev, Eilon Ram, Aryel Furman, Alexander Kogan, Ehud Raanani, Leonid Sternik

TL;DR
During wartime in Israel, cardiac surgery rates increased, but patient outcomes remained similar to those in peacetime.
Contribution
This study is one of the first to analyze cardiac surgery trends and outcomes during active war conditions in a major medical center.
Findings
There was a 33% increase in open-heart procedures during wartime despite half the surgeons being deployed.
Patient outcomes, including complications and mortality, were similar between wartime and peacetime.
Transplant numbers rose by 233% due to increased organ donors during the conflict.
Abstract
The war that began on October 7th, 2023, has impacted all major tertiary medical centers in Israel. In the largest cardiac surgery department in Israel there has been a surprising increase in the number of open-heart procedures, despite having approximately 50% of surgeons recruited to military service. The purpose of this study is to characterize this increase in the number of operations performed during wartime and assess whether the national crisis has affected patient outcomes. The study was based on a prospectively collected registry of 275 patients who underwent cardiac surgery or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) during the first two months of war, October 7th 2023 – December 7th 2023, as well as patients that underwent cardiac surgery during the same period of time in 2022 (October 7th, 2022 – December 7th, 2022). 120 patients (43.6%) were operated on in 2022, and 155…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCardiac Arrest and Resuscitation · Cardiac, Anesthesia and Surgical Outcomes · Trauma and Emergency Care Studies
