Malnutrition Assessment Tools in 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