Background Renal dysfunction is a significant variable in determining the outcome of the surgeries used to treat cardiovascular diseases - the most common being cardiopulmonary bypass graft (CABG) and valvular replacement (VR). In Saudi Arabia, the incidence of renal failure and diabetes is higher than that in most western populations. Our aim is to determine the renal outcome of patients who underwent cardiac surgery at King Faisal Cardiac Center (KFCC) over the past 3 years and explore the risk of preoperative renal function on the outcome.

Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all patients older than 18 years who underwent cardiac surgery at KFCC from May 2014 to June 2017. Data were analyzed using the statistical package IBM SPSS 22.

Results The 244 patients who underwent cardiac surgery in this study period had a mean age of 60.5±7.5 years and mean body- mass index (BMI) of 28.62±5.19. The patients in this sample had median postoperative creatinine of 77 (IQR 66–99.75) and median bypass time of 117 (IQR 84–143). There were five (2%) patients who died within 30 days, ten (4%) patients with temporary dialysis, 19 (7.8%) patients with postoperative renal dysfunction, and no patients with permanent dialysis. The data showed a significant relationship between levels of preoperative creatinine and postoperative renal dysfunction (p=0.0001, odds ratio 1.05, 95% CI 1.031–1.064). Time on bypass (p=0.998), hypertension (p=1.969), and diabetes (p=1.061) were all not significant. CABG was done in 180 (72%) of the patients.

Conclusion The main predictor for poor renal outcomes for cardiac surgery is preoperative creatinine, while other variables such as age, sex, BMI, cardiopulmonary bypass time, diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia did not show any risk to the renal outcome.