Evaluation of Cognitive Complications Following General Anesthesia in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery Using Wisconsin Test

One of the complications of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surgery is cognitive function decline. Due to the importance and direct effects of cognitive function on the quality of human life, this study was designed to compare the executive function of young CPB patients with the age range of 30-55 years one year after undergoing the surgery with healthy subjects.

This causal-comparative study was conducted from February 2017 to October 2018. The experimental group included 40 male patients with coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) with an age range of 30 to 55 years. They were hospitalized in the ICU of Tehran Heart Center over the past year. For the control group, 64 healthy men with the same age range were randomly selected. Both groups met all the inclusion criteria and were tested using the Wisconsin scale.

The results showed that in the levels of perseveration, correct and incorrect responses, the difference between the two groups was statistically significant at 1% error level (p<0/01). There was no significant difference between the two groups in the subscales of the number of attempts to complete the first model and the conceptual level responses (p>0/05).

According to the findings of this study, cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surgery, even in younger people with an age range of 30-55 years after one year, can impair the cognitive function of the frontal lobe of the brain.