Preoperative nutritional assessment by controlling nutritional status (CONUT) and postoperative complications for gastric cancer

Purpose: Controlling nutritional status (CONUT) is a tool for the assessment of the nutritional status of patients. Methods: The preoperative CONUT score of total 174 patients undergoing gastrectomy for gastric cancer was studied to see the relationship between preoperative nutritional status and postoperative complications. The patients were divided into two groups A or B; group A had a CONUT score of 3 or less (n=152), while group B had a CONUT score of 4 or more (n=22). Results: The average age at the time of the operation in group B was older (71.6±6.7 years old) than that in group A (65.2±11.3) (P=0.009). The clinical stage of 109 cases was stage IA or IB in group A, on the other hand, there were only 5 such cases in group B (P<0.0001). Postoperative complications occurred in 22 cases (14%) in group A, and in 9 cases (41%) in group B (P=0.002). Among them, infectious complications other than surgical site infection consisted of 4 cases (2.7%) and 4 cases (22.2%) respectively (P=0.001). Multivariate analysis revealed that preoperative higher CONUT level and advanced clinical stage were risk factors of infectious complications of remote organs. Conclusion: Patients with gastric cancer who have a preoperative CONUT score of 4 or more may be at increased risk for postoperative complications.