Preoperative Prognostic Nutritional Index and Postoperative Delirium in Gastrointestinal Cancer Surgery

Aim: Malnutrition, common among gastrointestinal cancer patients, affects morbidity and mortality. Prognostic nutritional index (PNI) is an inflammation-based scoring that measures the nutritional and immunological status of patients and has been used to determine prognosis and predict postoperative complications. Postoperative delirium (POD) describes a neurocognitive complication that may occur after surgery and anesthesia. Most of the studies examining the relationship between PNI and POD are retrospective and the number of prospective large case series are insufficient. In this study, we aimed to show the relationship between preoperative prognostic nutritional index and postoperative delirium in patients who had undergone gastrointestinal cancer surgery. Materials and Methods: Our study is a single-center, prospective, observational study. Routine preoperative anesthesia evaluation of all patients was performed and patient's age, sex, ASA physical score, body mass index (BMI), existing comorbid diseases, level of education, smoking status, cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy and radiotherapy history, type of surgery, past invasive interventions, concentration of hemoglobin and albumin, lymphocyte count, liver and kidney function tests were recorded. PNI score was calculated with the preoperative measurements. With the calculated PNI score, nutritional status was defined as normal (PNI ≥50), mild malnutrition (PNI 45-50), moderate-severe malnutrition (PNI 40-45), and severe (PNI \<40) accordingly. The patients were then evaluated for the presence of delirium using the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) for 3 days postoperatively.