title: Perioperative artificial nutrition in malnourished gastrointestinal cancer patients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the potential role of perioperative nutrition in reducing complications and mortality in malnourished gastrointestinal cancer patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  Four hundred and sixty-eight elective moderately or severely malnourished surgical patients with gastric or colorectal cancers defined by the subjective global assessment (SGA) were randomly assigned to 7 d preoperative and 7 d postoperative parenteral or enteral nutrition vs a simple control group. The nutrition regimen included 24.6+/-5.2 kcal /kg per d non-protein and 0.23+/-0.04 g nitrogen /kg per d. Control patients did not receive preoperative nutrition but received 600+/-100 kcal non-protein plus or not plus 62+/-16 g crystalline amino acids postoperatively.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Complications occurred in 18.3% of the patients receiving nutrition and in 33.5% of the control patients (P=0.012). Fourteen patients died in the control group and 5 in those receiving nutrition. There were significant differences in the mortality between the two groups (2.1% vs 6.0%, P=0.003). The total length of hospitalization and postoperative stay of control patients were significantly longer (29 vs 22 d, P=0.014) than those of the studied patients (23 vs 12 d, P=0.000).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Perioperative nutrition support is beneficial for moderately or severely malnourished gastrointestinal cancer patients and can reduce surgical complications and mortality.
authors: Department of General Surgery, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China. wugh@zshospital.net
authors: Guo-Hao
authors: GH
authors: Wu
authors: Zhong-Hua
authors: ZH
authors: Liu
authors: Zhao-Han
authors: ZH
authors: Wu
authors: Zhao-Guang
authors: ZG
authors: Wu