Tranexamic Acid Dose and Confusion After Cardiac Surgery

There will be no patient contact at any point of this retrospective analysis. The data collected will have been routinely collected on the hospital's electronic systems as part of routine clinical care and data collection. This is a very new field of interest in cardiac anaesthesia / surgery. No clinical data is currently available apart from recent preliminary data suggesting that Tranexamic Acid (TXA) improves the inflammatory reaction the nervous system has to surgery and cardiopulmonary bypass. The first trial in this area, a RCT (TXA vs no TXA) in abdominal surgery, has only just started recruiting (Tranexamic Acid to Reduce Delirium After Gastrointestinal Surgery: the TRIGS-D Trial; clinicaltrials.gov). The statistical methods will be determined once data distribution is known; the interdependence of primary and secondary outcome measures will be determined by multivariate regression analysis. At this stage it is not possible to devise a prospective randomised controlled trial similar the TRIGS-D study in cardiac surgery as giving TXA is considered standard of care. It might be possible, however, to design a RCT comparing different TXA dosing regimens once the the results of this retrospective analysis are available.