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Clinical nutrition, enteral and parenteral nutrition

Long-term nutrition intervention following major upper gastrointestinal surgery: a prospective randomized controlled trial

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 67, pages 324–329 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives:

Nutritional status has been shown to affect quality of life, tolerance of future treatments and survival in people having undergone major upper gastrointestinal surgery. The objective of this trial was to assess the impact of intense individualized dietary advice following major upper gastrointestinal surgery on nutritional status, dietary intake, gastrointestinal symptoms and quality of life, compared to the current usual care.

Subjects/Methods:

On discharge from hospital, people having had major upper gastrointestinal surgery were randomized to have dietetic follow-up fortnightly for 6 months or to a control group. Data collection was conducted at baseline, and at 1, 3 and 6 months.

Results:

Twenty-seven people were randomized to either the intervention or control group. There was a small but non-significant difference in percent weight loss in the intervention (−0.8±8.8) compared to the control group (−2.7±9.7) at 6 months. There were no other differences between the two groups.

Conclusions:

This small study did not demonstrate that intense individualized dietary advice leads to improvements in nutritional status and quality of life for people having had major upper gastrointestinal surgery. The study does highlight that this group is at high nutritional risk, and does support the need for a larger multicentre study.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the upper gastrointestinal surgeons Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for allowing their patients to be recruited into this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    S Carey, S Ferrie, R Ryan & J Beaton

  2. School of Molecular Bioscience, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    S Carey, S Ferrie & M Allman-Farinelli

  3. Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    J Young

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  1. S Carey
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Correspondence to S Carey.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Author contributions: All authors have contributed to the paper. SC conceived and designed the research, collected the data, analyzed the results and drafted the manuscript. SF was involved in analysis and interpretation of data and manuscript preparation. RR conducted the nutrition intervention. JB contributed to data collection. MA-F and JY were involved in the design of the research, analysis and interpretation of results and manuscript preparation.

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Carey, S., Ferrie, S., Ryan, R. et al. Long-term nutrition intervention following major upper gastrointestinal surgery: a prospective randomized controlled trial. Eur J Clin Nutr 67, 324–329 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2013.17

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