Sara Anderson 10/5/12 CCHS 315 Scholarly Article Statistical Review I reviewed an article titled Tissue Oxygenation Saturation

and Outcome After Cardiac Surgery. This article was published in a professional nursing journal, American Journal of Critical Care, to which I subscribe. The articles in this professional journal were researched thoroughly and peer-reviewed. According to Sander, et al., (2011), the objective of this article was to determine the association of changes in tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) with postoperative outcome in cardiac surgery patients (p. 138). The hypothesis was that a person undergoing coronary bypass or valve replacement surgery may experience reduced oxygen delivery to muscle tissue this reduced oxygen to muscle tissue can significantly delay recover post-op (Sander, et al., 2011). This study consisted of 74 adults who underwent coronary bypass or valve surgery; their oxygen saturation levels were monitored for 24 hours post-op. The values were compared and contrasted between the subjects of the study. I believe that this particular articles data analysis and reported statistics are difficult to comprehend when reading them throughout the article. The stats are much easier to comprehend in the three tables and two graphs that were included in the article. For example, take this brief sample of the text that I found particularly difficult to understand: The differences in StO2 in cardiac surgery patients would be greater than the StO2 standard deviation in healthy volunteers, the power to sample size ratio was calculated to test the hypothesis that a significant difference (10 units) in StO2 values would occur in patients who had coronary artery bypass surgery (Sander, et al., 2011, p 141). This article contained three tables of statistical data and two line graphs. The tables reported characteristics of participants and values pertaining to those characteristics. The graphs contained things like mean age of participants, the percentage of participants with certain risk factors diabetes, smokers, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, previous myocardial infarction, decreased left ventricular function, and pulmonary disease (Sanders, et al., 2011). The second table took into consideration the medications that the participants were taking preoperatively. The third table broke down the outcomes of the study death, recovery, prolonged ventilation, etc. (Sander, et al., 2011). The tables containing the statistical data made the article easier to read and understand it was nice to have these tables to help me interpret the information. One of the line graphs labeled StO2 percentage on the y-axis with a range of 75-95%. The x-axis represented minutes from the induction of anesthesia. The graph showed that StO2 was lowest when the participants were first intubated but the StO2 steadily increased over the first five minutes of the anesthesia. The second

graph had mean StO2 percentage on the y-axis and time period that ranged from the very end of the surgery until six hours post operatively. This graph demonstrated that StO2 percentage was highest just after surgery and was the lowest two hours post operatively. Personally, I found the article extremely dry and difficult to read but thanks to the graphs and the tables, I was able to at least comprehend the purpose of the article and the outcome of the study. Sander, J., Toor, I., Yurik, T., Keogh, B., Mythen, M., Montgomery, H. (2011). Tissue oxygenation saturation and outcome after cardiac surgery. American Journal of Critical Care 20(2). 138-145.