Patient selection: age >= 18 years of age
Parameters:
(1) surgical invasiveness index for spinal surgery (ranges from 0 to 48)
Cardiac complications: air embolism, cardiac arrest, arrhythmia, CHF, hypertension, hypotension, myocardial infarction or ischemia, inappropriate or inadequate fluid therapy, hypothermia
Predictors for cardiac complications from multivariate analysis:
(1) age > 65 years
(2) congestive heart failure
(3) cerebrovascular disease
(4) surgical invasiveness (reference <= 5)
Other factors from univariate analysis:
(1) age 40 to 65 years
(2) diabetes
(3) previous myocardial infarct or cardiac incident
(4) COPD
(5) renal disease
(6) hypertension
(7) cancer
(8) revision surgery
(9) syncope or seizure
