Quality of life ten years after surgery for acute coronary syndrome or stable angina.

Objective: To investigate health-related quality of life (QOL) late after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) due to acute coronary syndrome (ACS) or stable angina, and also to compare QOL in these two groups to matched samples from the general Swedish population.

Methods: One-hundred patients with ACS and 100 with stable angina undergoing CABG were included. A Short Form-36 (SF-36) QOL survey was sent to all patients alive in April, 2008 (n = 142). The primary outcome measures were the SF-36 physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) scores.

Results: Response rate was 80%. There was no significant difference in the PCS (39.3 vs. 42.0; p = 0.24) or MCS (47.7 vs. 48.3; p = 0.77) scores between patients with ACS or stable angina after 10.3 years. There was no clinical significant difference in QOL after CABG for ACS or stable angina, and the age- and gender-matched reference population.

Conclusions: Surgical revascularization offers excellent long term QOL, comparable to that of a matched control population. No difference was found between patients with ACS or stable angina pectoris.