Muhammad A. Javed

Letter Regarding Article by Jin et al, “Is Obesity a Risk Factor for Mortality in Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery?”

To the Editor: To date, there are more than 20 published reports, with that by Jin et al1 being the latest, that describe the relationship of body mass index/obesity with postoperative CABG mortality. Almost all studies report the fact that risk of mortality is high in underweight patients and decreases as an inverse function of BMI, until the threshold of class III obesity is reached, where the risk becomes high again. Gurm et al2 recently showed that a similar trend prevails in patients undergoing PTCA. This takes the perspective away from the surgical procedure and puts the focus on finding confounding factors related to obesity that might be at the …