[Assessment of nutritional status for surgical planning]

72 patients with gastro-intestinal carcinomas were involved in a retrospective study in which 97 metabolic parameters were pre-operatively determined from each of them and subsequently tested by stepwise discriminant analysis for their bearings on clinical mortality. A discriminant function of seven parameters was obtained and can be used as a prognostic nutritional index for successful subdivision of patients into differentiated risk groups. Two prospective control studies were conducted into 605 patients consecutively operated on for benign and malignant diseases for the purpose of testing the nutritional index for its prognostic information potential. The discriminant function proved to be applicable to differentiation between patients with high, moderate, and low surgical risk. Findings were unambiguous. The nutritional index can thus be used as an aid for decision-making in cases in which alternatives exist between several surgical approaches. The importance of malnutrition as a possible causative factor of complications is likely to grow along with the invasiveness of the intervention.