Nutrition assessment as a predictor of clinical outcomes for infants with cardiac surgery: using the prognostic nutritional index.

Background: The aim of the present study was to determine whether nutrition assessment helps predict clinical outcomes (COs) in infants who have undergone cardiac surgery.

Methods: Study subjects were infants, aged less than 18 months, who had undergone cardiac surgery between April 2007 and August 2008. The nutrition parameters assessed include Onodera's prognostic nutritional index (PNI), height for age, weight for height, and weight for age. COs included mortality rate during hospitalization, length of stay in intensive care unit (LOS-1), length of stay in the hospital after surgery (LOS-2), and duration of mechanical ventilation support. Method-1: the correlation between nutrition parameters and COs was examined by statistical analysis. Method-2: the cutoff point of nutrition parameters was determined using the minimum P value approach.

Results: The following results were obtained: Results-1: PNI was the only nutrition parameter found to be correlated with LOS-1. Results-2: the cutoff point for PNI as a predictor of LOS-1 was 55.

Conclusions: It appeared that preoperative PNI was the most influential factor on LOS-1 for infants after they underwent cardiac surgery. The PNI cutoff point 55 in infants who underwent cardiac surgery seems to be the best predictor of CO.