The prognostic impact of preoperative nutritional status on postoperative complications and overall survival in patients with resectable pancreatic cancer.

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of the study is to demonstrate the prognostic impact of preoperative nutritional status indicators, including prognostic nutritional index (PNI), hemoglobin-albumin-lymphocyte-platelet (HALP) score, sarcopenia index (SI), and bone mineral density (BMD) values, on postoperative complications and survival in patients with resectable pancreatic cancer (PC).

Materials and methods: The medical data and computed tomography (CT) images of 85 patients who undergone surgery for PC between January 2017 and 2023 were evaluated retrospectively. Patients were grouped according to the presence or absence of sarcopenia and osteoporosis, high and low PNI and HALP scores. The groups were compared in terms of the complication development rate, 30- and 90-day mortality, and 5-years overall survival (OS). Sarcopenia and osteoporosis were determined from CT images (sarcopenia index used for sarcopenia, bone mineral density for osteoporosis).

Results: Except from OS (p < 0.0001), no differences were found between sarcopenic and non-sarcopenic groups in terms of postoperative complications, 30- and 90-day mortality (p = 0.775, p = 0.704, p = 0.196, respectively). There were no differences between the groups with and without osteoporosis in terms of the presence of postoperative complications, 30- and 90-day mortality, and OS (p = 0.770, p = 0.608, p = 0.196, p = 0.09, respectively) as low and high HALP score groups (p = 0.236, p = 0.696, p = 0.299, p = 0.45, respectively). Except from a 30-day mortality (p = 0.03), no differences were found between low and high PNI groups in terms of postoperative complications, 90-day mortality, and OS (p = 0.82, p = 0.09, p = 0.18, respectively).

Conclusion: PNI may be used as prognostic data for early postoperative mortality, while sarcopenia may be indicative of 5-year OS in patients with resectable PC. Our results suggest that providing nutritional support may potentially improve prognosis. Future studies, in which other factors effective in prognosis are evaluated together with nutritional status, will show more information on this subject.