Malnutrition as a risk factor of adverse postoperative outcomes in patients undergoing hepatic resection: analysis of US hospitals.

Abstract

In patients with liver cancer or space-occupying cysts, they suffer from malnutrition due to compression of gastric and digestive structures, liver and cancer-mediated dysmetabolism, and impaired nutrient absorption. As proportion of these patients require removal of lesions through hepatic resection, it is important to evaluate the effects of malnutrition on post-hepatectomy outcomes. In our study approach, 2011-2017 National Inpatient Sample was used to isolate in-hospital hepatectomy cases, which were stratified using malnutrition (composite of malnutrition, sarcopenia, and weight loss/cachexia). The malnutrition-absent controls were matched to cases using nearest neighbor propensity score match method and compared to following endpoints: mortality, length of stay, hospitalization costs, and postoperative complications. There were 2531 patients in total who underwent hepatectomy with matched number of controls from the database; following the match, malnutrition cohort (compared to controls) were more likely to experience in-hospital death (6.60% vs 5.25% p<0.049, OR 1.27 95%CI 1.01-1.61), and were more likely to have higher length of stay (18.10d vs 9.32d p<0.001) and hospitalization costs ($278,780 vs $150,812 p<0.001). In terms of postoperative complications, malnutrition cohort was more likely to experience bleeding (6.52% vs 3.87% p<0.001 OR 1.73 95%CI1.34-2.24), infection (6.64% vs 2.49% p<0.001, OR 2.79 95%CI 2.07-3.74), wound complications (4.5% vs 1.38% p<0.001, OR 3.36 95%CI 2.29-4.93), and respiratory failure (9.40% vs 4.11% p<0.001 OR 2.42 95%CI 1.91-3.07). In multivariate, malnutrition was associated with higher mortality (p<0.028, aOR 1.3 95%CI 1.03-1.65). Thus, we conclude that malnutrition is an independent risk factor of postoperative mortality in patients undergoing hepatectomy.