Nutritional Screening in Cardiovascular Disease

This is a nutritional screening and assessment study conducted prior to heart surgery. The nutritional status of patients will be assessed by a series of questionnaires, blood/urine biomarkers and measurement of grip strength and body composition. The investigators will then evaluate of any of the assessments are linked with clinical outcomes following surgery. For example, how long do patients stop in the intensive care unit (ICU), in hospital and how many complications patients experience. The investigators hope to use this important clinical data to understand how medical staff can identify a poor nutritional status and which patients may need nutritional support prior to surgery.

This is a cross sectional nutritional screening and assessment study conducted prior to cardiac surgery . The investigators will focus on comparing aspects of nutritional status with robust and validated clinical outcomes (mechanical ventilation, ICU time, hospital stay and Society of Cardiothoracic Surgery (SCTS) complications). The investigators will utilise various nutritional screening questionnaires and assessments, including routine clinical malnutrition tools (i.e. MUST, NRS), plus more nutritional quality assessments such as the NOVA ultra-processed food intake, mediterranean diet and blood biomarker panels such as the Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI), Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT). The investigators will also undertake a functional grip strength test and measure body composition including fat mass (FM) \& fat-free mass (FFM), segmental analysis, sarcopenic obesity and visceral fat. The study will also conduct questionnaires regarding other lifestyle related factors (sleep, recent physical activity, stress, anxiety, depression) which might also influence surgical outcomes.