Atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery: predictors and the role of MgSO4 replacement.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Magnesium Sulfate in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Supraventricular arrhythmias continue to complicate the postoperative course of patients undergoing myocardial revascularization.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 25 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Consenting patients with good left ventricular function and without any documented arrhythmias were randomly divided into two groups of 25 patients each in a double-blind fashion.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

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

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Magnesium Sulfate, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Magnesium Sulfate group a baseline to be compared against.

The clinical characteristics of both groups were similar.

In the study group, 200 mEq MgSO4 was given for the first 5 postoperative days, in the control group, placebo was given instead of MgSO4.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Atrial Fibrillation, Coronary Artery Bypass, Incidence, Magnesium Sulfate, Postoperative Care, Postoperative Complications and Risk Factors.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Magnesium Sulfate in 25 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 3 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1997 (Journal of cardiac surgery), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.