Preoperative Prognostic Nutritional Index and Nomogram for Predicting the Risk of Postoperative Complications in Patients With Crohn's Disease

INTRODUCTION: Patients with Crohn's disease (CD) are at a high risk of having postoperative complications. Preoperative prognostic nutritional index (PNI) has been extensively studied for postoperative complications in malignancies but seldom for CD. METHODS: Patients who underwent CD-related bowel surgery for the first time in our hospital were retrospectively enrolled from January 2013 to October 2019. Differences in clinical features in low-PNI (<= 34) and high-PNI (>34) groups were compared. A prognostic nomogram was then established to explore the risk factors and their assignments of postoperative complications. RESULTS: A total of 124 patients who underwent CD-related bowel surgery in our hospital from January 2013 to October 2019 were enrolled. Of these patients, 39 (31.5%) were categorized in the low-PNI group. The serum albumin levels (23.464.8 vs 35.865.2 g/L, P< 0.001), hemoglobin levels (98.0 +/- 24.1 vs 115.8 622.2 g/L, P< 0.001), and white blood cell counts (8.3 +/- 5.4x10(9) vs 6.3 +/- 3.0x10(9), P=0.009) of the patients in the low-PNI group were lower than those in the high-PNI group. Postoperative complications were observed in 35 cases of the total cohort, 20 of 39 (51.3%) in the low-PNI group, and 15 of 85 (17.6%) in the high-PNI group (P < 0.001). A prognostic nomogram was built through least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression. The nomogram revealed a significant difference in the length of postoperative stay between patients with high-risk postoperative complications and those with low-risk postoperative complications (17.07 +/- 24.73 vs 10.36 +/- 4.51, P = 0.02). DISCUSSION: PNI is closely associated with postoperative complications in patients with CD. Its inclusion in a prognostic nomogram provides a convenient mechanism to predict postoperative complications in patients with CD undergoing surgery.