Malnutrition Assessment Tools in Surgery

Evaluation of Malnutrition Risk Assessment Tools in General Surgery.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the main malnutrition risk assessment tools in patients undergoing operations of general surgery.

This is a multi centre prospective observational study including patients undergoing major/major+ operation of general surgery. Patients will be interviewed by surgical trainees and their malnutrition risk will be assessed with the use of SGA, MUST, NRS, MNA-SF etc. Clinical variables and demographics will also be recorded in order to enable meaningful comparisons of malnutrition risk assessment tools in terms of serious postoperative complications.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age >18 years

• Patients undergoing elective or emergency surgery. Urgency of emergent operations is classified as follows, according to the clinical judgment of the surgeon, regarding the maximum time a patient could wait for surgery:

  • 3.Expedited (>18 hours)
  • 2B. Urgent (6-18 hours)
  • 2A. Urgent (2-6 hours)
  • 1. Immediate (<2 hours)

• Operations involving the gastrointestinal tract

• Magnitude of operation graded by POSSUM [17,18]:

  • Major+ (examples include colonic resection abdominoperineal resection of the rectum, radical total gastrectomy, intestinal bypass, whipple resection)
  • Major (examples include adhesiolysis, stoma formation, small bowel resection, anterior resection, cholecystectomy and exploration of the bile duct)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Age <18 years

• Magnitude of operation graded by POSSUM:

  • Minor
  • Intermediate

• Inability to perform nutritional assessment

• Inability to provide informed consent