Detection of Postoperative Cognitive Decline After Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery is Affected by the Number of Neuropsychological Tests in the Assessment Battery

Increasing the number of tests used to classify postoperative cognitive dysfunction appears to increase the sensitivity to change in the coronary artery bypass graft group. However, accompanying false positive classifications suggest that this improved sensitivity reflected increased error. Future rules for postoperative cognitive dysfunction need to account for this error and include a control group.