title: Nutritional status as a risk factor in esophageal surgery.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Nutritional condition is one of the factors determining postoperative outcome in esophageal surgery. This study explored the relation between preoperative nutritional status and postoperative infectious complications.
  
  
  METHODS
  From a prospective database, 400 patients who underwent esophageal resection for malignancy were selected. Preoperative nutritional status was assessed by body mass index, prognostic nutritional index (PNI), nutritional risk index (NRI) and weight loss. The association between nutritional parameters and postoperative complications and mortality, gender, age and hospitalization was assessed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  PNI and NRI differed between the patients with and without postoperative infectious complications (p = 0.031 and p = 0.009, respectively). However, receiver operating characteristic curves showed that PNI and NRI have a low predictive value for such complications. Also, no associations were found between nutritional parameters and in-hospital mortality. Although mean nutritional parameters were significantly lower, i.e. worse, in patients with neoadjuvant treatment as compared to no such treatment, the incidence of complications did not significantly differ between these treatment groups. Although PNI and NRI correlated negatively with age, no association was found between age and infectious complications. Multivariate analysis of various factors showed the male gender to be the only significant risk factor for development of infectious complications.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Preoperative nutritional status established by PNI, NRI, body mass index and weight loss has limited value in predicting complications following esophageal resection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: I J M
authors.initials: IJ
authors.lastname: Han-Geurts
authors.forename: W C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Hop
authors.forename: T C K
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.forename: H W
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Tilanus
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015992:Body Mass Index; D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000601:surgery*; D016629:Esophagectomy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009017:Morbidity / Q000639:trends; D009752:Nutritional Status; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011379:Prognosis; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors