Abstract
[Objective] The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether two simple indicators, namely the CONUT Score and the Surgical Apgar Score, are useful for the risk assessment of gastrointestinal surgery in elderly patients.
[Materials and Methods] The subjects of this study consisted of 112 patients over 75 years of age that who underwent gastrointestinal surgery in this department between January 2008 and December 2010. They were divided into two groups with or without postoperative complications, especially infectious complications. The CONUT Score and the Surgical Apgar Score were compared between the two groups retrospectively.
[Results] The ratio of high-risk patients by Surgical Apgar Score was significantly higher in the group with complications (p=0.0159) . The ratio of patients who had moderate or severe malnutrition, judging from the CONUT Score, was significantly higher in the group with infectious complications (p=0.0145) . In addition, the results of the nutritional assessment by the CONUT Score influenced the value of the Surgical Apgar Score. Furthermore, poor scores for both the CONUT Score and the Surgical Apgar Score were considered to indicate“double positive,”and the incidence of postoperative infectious complications in the double positive group increased markedly. A multiple logistic regression analysis, identified“double positive”as a factor that predicted infectious complications.
[Conclusions] The CONUT Score and the Surgical Apgar Score are thus considered to be clinically useful for predicting postoperative complications and they can be successfully used to select high-risk patients after gastrointestinal surgery in elderly patients.
