Poor nutritional status and sarcopenia influences survival outcomes in gastric carcinoma patients undergoing radical...

The survival impacts of the prognostic nutritional index (PNI) and sarcopenia have been separately investigated in patients with gastric carcinoma (GC), while the prognostic impact of the combination of them remains to be addressed.

In total, 1166 GC patients undergoing radical gastrectomy were retrospectively reviewed. A new prognostic score (PNIS) was developed based on preoperative PNI and sarcopenia; patients with both low PNI (≤44.8) and sarcopenia were allocated a score of 2, and those with only one or neither of these abnormalities were assigned a score of 1 or 0, respectively.

A lower PNI was independently associated with sarcopenia (P = 0.007). There were 704 (60.4%), 356 (30.5%) and 106 (9.1%) patients in the PNIS 0, 1 and 2 groups, respectively. A higher PNIS was associated with advanced age (P < 0.001) and a higher incidence of postoperative complications (P = 0.01). Patients with PNIS 2 showed significantly poorer overall survival (OS) than those with PNIS 1 or 0 (5-year OS; 57.8% vs. 79.2% vs. 91.6%, P < 0.001). Multivariate Cox hazards analysis showed PNIS 2 to be a powerful predictor of poor OS (HR 5.73, P < 0.001) in patients with pStage I disease, while not being independently associated with OS in those with pStage II/III disease. Patients with PNIS 2 had a markedly higher prevalence of non-GC-related death than those with scores of 0-1.

The scoring system combining PNI and sarcopenia is useful for predicting survival outcomes, especially non-GC-related death, in patients with early GC, a population with basically good oncological outcomes.