Introduction:

the aim of the study is to evaluate the effect of preoperative and postoperative oral nutritional therapy in the prevention of malnutrition and postsurgical complications in colorectal cancer

Patients and methods:

patients who underwent oncological colorectal surgery between June 2014 and December 2015 are included. An evaluation of preoperative nutritional status is performed. Patients received IMPACT® (2/day) for 5-10 days previous surgery. In the postoperative period, patients received IMPACT®/24h from 3rd to 7th postoperative day. Patients with low rates of albumin (< 2.5) or postoperative ileus received parenteral nutrition. Data were analyzed with the statistical package SPSS 21.0.

Results:

two hundred and twenty colorectal cancer patients were included. Twenty-eight patients did not take the preoperative oral supplements. Following the intake of nutritional supplements, an improvement of prealbumin and transferrin was noticed. One hundred and twenty-one patients received oral nutrition and 41 received parenteral nutrition in the postoperative period. There were more postoperative complications among patients without preoperative nutritional supplements (50% vs 28.1%; p = 0.019), and hospital stay was higher 14.64 ± 11.86 vs 9.36 ± 5.5; p < 0.005). There were more complications among patients without postoperative oral nutritional supplements (24% vs 18.2%; p < 0.005), with more wound infection (1.9% vs 0.8%) and leaks (1.9% vs 0.8%). They also had a higher average stay (9.15 4.6 vs 7.57 2.5 days; p = 0.021).

Conclusion:

in our study, patients that received oral nutritional supplements prior and following colorectal surgery had a lower rate of complications and a shorter hospital stay.

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