Nutritional Risk in Patients Prepared for Surgical Treatment: A Cross-Sectional NRS 2002 Study

Background/Objectives: Preoperative nutritional status is a recognised determinant of postoperative outcomes, influencing wound healing, complication rates, and length of hospital stay. This study assessed nutritional risk among patients prepared for surgical treatment using the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002) tool and examined its association with sociodemographic characteristics, gastrointestinal symptoms, comorbidities, and malignancy diagnosis. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 94 patients hospitalized on general/minimally invasive surgery and oncological surgery wards of a military clinical hospital in Lublin, Poland, between January and March 2025, using the NRS 2002 tool alongside a structured sociodemographic and clinical questionnaire. Normality was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test. Group comparisons used the Mann-Whitney U test for two groups and the Kruskal-Wallis H test for three or more groups, with post hoc pairwise comparisons where indicated; associations with age and treatment duration were assessed using Spearman's rank correlation; and the association between malignancy diagnosis and nutritional risk category was assessed using the chi-square test with Cramér's V. Analyses were performed in R 4.2.2/RStudio, with α set at 0.05. Results: Most patients (76.6%, n = 72; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 67.1-84.0%) showed no increased nutritional risk on the final NRS 2002 classification, while 23.4% (n = 22; 95% CI: 16.0-32.9%) had an indication for nutritional treatment. Nutritional risk score increased significantly with age (Spearman ρ = 0.633, p < 0.001), educational level (Kruskal-Wallis H(3) = 19.29, p < 0.001), marital status (H(3) = 17.70, p = 0.001), employment status (H(2) = 21.92, p < 0.001), and ward length of stay (H(3) = 36.18, p < 0.001). Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and appetite loss were each associated with higher scores (all p ≤ 0.002), whereas heartburn was not. Hypertension, atherosclerosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were associated with elevated scores (p ≤ 0.045). The proportion meeting the nutritional-treatment threshold was numerically higher among patients with malignancy than among those without malignancy (32.6% vs. 15.7%), but this difference did not reach statistical significance (Pearson χ²(1) = 3.70, p = 0.054, Cramér's V = 0.199). Analyses of admission mode and total illness duration were not statistically significant (p = 0.828 and p = 0.452, respectively). Conclusions: While most patients prepared for surgery had no increased nutritional risk according to NRS 2002, nearly one in four met the tool's threshold for nutritional treatment. In exploratory unadjusted analyses, higher scores were observed among older, retired, widowed, and less-educated patients and among those reporting selected gastrointestinal symptoms or specific comorbidities. Patients with malignancy more often met the threshold for nutritional treatment, although this difference was not statistically significant in the present sample. These findings support systematic preoperative nutritional screening followed by further assessment of patients who screen positive, consistent with Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) principles.