Newsletter

[ Vol. 9 No. 3 ] (September - December 2008 )
Prevalence of patients at nutritional risk among those who underwent gastrointestinal surgery for cancer

Hosun Lee, Choong Bae Kim¹
Department of Dietetics, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University Health System,
Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College of Medicine¹, Seoul, Korea

Background:  Undernutrition is associated with increased morbidity and mortality and is common in patients admitted to hospital for gastrointestinal (GI) surgery. We examined the prevalence at nutritional risk among those who underwent GI surgery and whether a nutritional support was provided for patients at nutritional risk after surgery.

Methods:  We prospectively studied 100 patients admitted to Severance Hospital, Yonsei University Health System for elective GI surgery form September, 2006 to February, 2007. The NRS-2002 was used to evaluate nutritional risk. Patients were characterized by scoring the components ‘undernutrition’ and ‘severity of disease’ in 4 categories (absent, mild, moderate of severe). The patient could have a score of 0-3 for each component (undernutrition and severity of disease), and any patient with a total score > 3 was considered at nutritional risk. Undernutrition was evaluated by 3 variables (BMI, recent weight loss, recent food intake). We recorded primary physicians’ order of nutrition support after surgery.

Results: Patients’ mean age was 57.4 11.8 years old; 69 cases were male and 31 were female. Out of the 95 patients underwent gastric or colon surgery, 47.4% were at nutritional risk. There was no significant difference between the 2 groups according to the site of surgery (46.8% of 62 gastric surgery patients vs. 48.5% of 33 colon surgery patients, p=0.67). Although 41.7% of the patients at nutritional risk were not provided nutrition support at all, 58.3% of the patients without nutritional risk were provided parenteral nutrition support after surgery.

Conclusion:  We concluded that the introduction of a screening system for nutritional risk seems to be necessary for the improvement of GI surgery patients’ nutritional status through the cost-effective nutrition therapy protocol.

From  
The 12^th PENSA Congress
October 18-20 2007, Century Park Hotel. Manila, Philippines 
Page: 52