Medisan (Sep 2016)
Nutritional evaluation of patients discharged from a general surgery service
Abstract
A descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out, in order to evaluate the nutritional state of 91 patients discharged from the General Surgery Service of "Saturnino Lora Torres" Clinical Surgical Teaching Provincial Hospital in Santiago de Cuba who had been treated with elective major surgery, during the triennium 2013-2015. There was a decrease of the patients with malnutrition and increase of the bioimpedance values, which constituted the most sensitive method to determine those patients affected with possibility of complications, because 89.5% of the malnourished cases had complications in the postoperative period. Also, the infection of the surgical site was the most frequent complication. It was concluded that malnutrition is an important problem for the operated patients and the most suitable methods for their nutritional evaluation are the corporal mass index, bioimpedance, as well as the global count of lymphocytes.
