Nutritional assessment and hand grip strength of candidates for surgery of the gastrointestinal tract.

Background: The assessment of nutritional status in clinical practice must be done with simple, reliable, low cost and easy performance methods. The power of handshake is recognized as a useful tool to evaluate muscle strength, and therefore, it is suggested that can detect malnutrition.

Aim: To evaluate the nutritional status by subjective global assessment and power of handshake preoperatively in patients going to gastrointestinal surgeries and to compare the diagnosis obtained by subjective global assessment with traditional anthropometric methods and power of handshake.