Diagnosis-related group impact of nutrition support in cardiac surgery patients

We studied the diagnosis-related groups (DRG) impact of nutrition support on 80 consecutive cardiac surgery patients operated upon during a 6-month period. Six of 80 patients were nutritionally depleted preoperatively. Seven received postoperative supplemental nutrition, all of whom had major postoperative complications. Patients were arbitrarily placed into three outcome groups: group I consisted of seven patients who received postoperative nutrition support; group II included 38 patients who received no nutrition support and did not develop complications; Group III consisted of 35 patients who received no nutrition support but developed postoperative complications. All group I patients were length of stay (LOS) outliers. Group I patients were significantly older than groups II and III (p less than 0.0003) and had a significantly longer average length of stay (ALOS) (p less than 0.001), ALOS in SICU (p less than 0.0001) and greater incidence of both septic complications (p less than 0.02) and mortality (p less than 0.02). Nutrition support in cardiac surgery patients warrants special DRG consideration in light of the significantly increased hospitalization and resource utilization as compared with all other patients in cardiac surgery.