Association Between Perioperative Nutritional Status and Surgical Outcome in Digestive System Cancer Patients

Malnutrition is a common problem in cancer patients. It negatively influences patients' prognosis and quality of life. In gastrointestinal patients, it is also caused by insufficient food intake due to dysphagia, lack of appetite, nausea, vomiting, impaired digestion and absorption.

Furthermore, influence of prior oncologic treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy), have been associated with prolonged hospital stay, more postoperative complications and low survival outcome1-4. So, the proper assessment of nutrition status to detect perioperative malnutrition may allow appropriate nutritional therapy and improve survival5.

However, the important factor which prolongs survival rate is good preoperative nutrition status because it effects the postoperative nutrition outcome. The objective of this study is to correlate the association between pre- and postoperative nutrition status and surgical outcomes.

The Nutrition Alert Form (NAF) is a clinical tool for determining nutritional status. The NAF was modified from Subjective Global Assessment (SGA)6, and it is easy to use and does not require nutritional expertise based on laboratory and physical examination. Therefore, the NAF has been used extensively for screening of malnutrition in hospitalized Thai patients and it can classify the nutritional status into three groups : NAF-A (Normal-Mild malnutrition), NAF-B (Moderate malnutrition), NAF-C (Severe malnutrition)