Association between length of hospital stay before and after surgery and nutritional risk according to NRE-2017 – A secondary analysis of a cohort study

Abstract Aim: to evaluate the predictive ability of the Nutritional Risk Emergency - 2017 (NRE) to predict prolonged length of stay, ICU admission intra-mortality and readmission, severe postoperative complications. Methods: a prospective cohort was conducted with surgical patients admitted in a public tertiary hospital. The NRE-2017 tool was applied for detecting malnutrition risk in hospitalized patients. Surgical complications were assessed by Clavien-Dindo. Patients were followed during hospitalization to identify length of stay as well as stay after surgery in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Regression analysis was performed to assess the association between risk of malnutrition and clinical outcomes. Results: we included 162 elective surgery patients; 79 patients were identified with nutritional risk using the NRE-2017 (≥ 1.5) tool and 83 without nutritional risk. Patients with nutritional risk were at higher risk of prolonged hospitalization [18 (10-36) days vs. 13 (7-23 days); p: 0.006] and ICU hospitalization [6 (2-14 days vs. 3.5 (1-7 days; p: 0.020]. There was an association between surgical complications and nutritional risk independently, but the significance was lost when adjusting the analysis. There was no association with mortality and readmission in this sample of patients. Conclusion: the NRE-2017 tool was associated with hospital stay in those patients at nutritional risk, however there was no association with mortality and readmission.