The value of nutritional assessment in the surgical XXXX .

@entity1 @entity353 @entity260 @entity3147 @entity204
The prevalence of @entity3147 in Veterans Administration Hospitals has been well documented. Several methods have been proposed to assess nutritional status including prognostic nutritional index (PNI) and instant nutritional assessment (INA). A prospective study was done to evaluate the currently used nutritional assessments and determine their efficacy based on sensitivity and specificity in predicting surgical morbidity and mortality. Data on 46 @entity1 were evaluated for the multiparameter index of PNI, total lymphocyte count and serum albumin for INA, and @entity353 alone. In this analysis, intermediate and high risk PNI were combined as positive predictor of complications. Any abnormal value in INA was considered positive as was @entity353 of greater than 6% of usual body weight. Sensitivity and specificity of each assessment method were determined by 2 X 2 contingency table, and significance of observed differences between methods was determined by chi 2 analysis. There were no complications or @entity204 in @entity1 with less than 6% @entity353 . All three @entity1 with abnormal albumin and total lymphocyte count had complications as compared to only three of 32 @entity1 when both of these parameters were normal. The PNI was also able to predict complications with an increasing incidence as the PNI increased. Only the difference between specificity of @entity353 alone vs INA was statistically significant, p less than 0.05. Thus, @entity353 alone can be used as a rapid, inexpensive assessment of nutritional status for predicting @entity260 .
