Outcome-based justification for implementing new point-of-care tests: there is no difference between magnesium replacement based on ionized magnesium and total magnesium as a predictor of development of arrhythmias in the postoperative cardiac surgical patient.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Magnesium in the context of post-surgical inflammation and surgery recovery, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To determine whether introducing a new laboratory test, ionized magnesium (iMg++), would affect outcome, where outcome was defined as the rate of arrhythmias in a population of postoperative cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) patients.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are older adults, both men and women.

One hundred fifty consecutive post-CPB patients with randomized to two groups, one of which received routine reporting of iMg++ levels on all postoperative electrolyte requests while the other had access to total magnesium (tMg++) levels on demand and no access to iMg++ levels.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Because people in this Magnesium study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Cardiothoracic surgical intensive care unit of a university hospital.

Groups were compared for rate of arrhythmias, total amount of magnesium repleted, and demographics.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Arrhythmias, Cardiac, Biomarkers, Cardiopulmonary Bypass, Hospitals, University, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, Magnesium and Outcome Assessment, Health Care.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Magnesium in people with post-surgical inflammation and surgery recovery.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 6 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1998 (Clinical laboratory management review : official publication of the Clinical Laboratory Management Association), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc library page, Post-surgical inflammation and surgery recovery research.