Nutritional status and postoperative complications in patients with digestive cancer

Background: Risk of malnutrition is elevated among oncologic patients, and this increases postoperative morbidity and mortality. Aim: To study the association between nutritional status and postoperative outcomes in a group of patients with gastrointestinal cancers. Patients and Methods: We studied 129 patients with diagnosis of digestive cancer, previous to potentially curative surgery. Nutritional status was evaluated through anthropometric measures, Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), dietary intake recalls and routine biochemical parameters. Functional performance was assessed by the Karnofsky index (KI). Cancer stage was classified according to TNM4. During the postoperative period, complications, length of stay at the critical care ward and duration of hospitalization were registered. Thirty days after discharge, patients were contacted, and the appearance of new complications was listed. Results: According to SGA 14.7% of patients were classified as well nourished (A), 57.3% as moderately undernourished or at risk of malnutrition (B) and 27.9% as severely malnourished (C). The incidence of total complications was 25.5%. Nutritional status was not associated with cancer stage. The frequency of complications among patients classified as A, B and C were 5.5, 25.3 and 37.1% respectively (p = 0.03). Conclusions: We detected a high frequency of malnutrition in this group of patients. Overall the frequency of postoperative complications was low, however malnourished patients exhibited a higher rate of surgical complications.