La consultation pré-anesthésique comme outil de dépistage nutritionnel préopératoire

Objective

In severely malnourished patients, preoperative nutritional support helps lessen the adverse impact of malnourishment on postoperative progress. An essential prerequisite is to identify this malnourishment. We wanted to find out whether pre-anaesthetic consultation (which is not compulsory in Belgium) was a tool that could be used to achieve these objectives of preoperative nutritional screening in patients undergoing abdominal surgery.

Method

Our working method comprised of three phases. Having conducted a study to determine our situation, we integrated the NRS 2002 into our computerised consultation protocol and created a procedure used to link our consultation with the dietetics consultation on the same day. We then analysed the effectiveness of our actions.

Results

We received 87.8% of patients undergoing elective abdominal surgery at the pre-anaesthetic consultation. Thanks to the computerisation of the NRS 2002, our nutritional screening rose from 60.8% to 86.1%. All patients at risk of malnutrition were referred to the dietetics service on the same day for a nutritional assessment and nutritional support if necessary. This procedure reduced the hospital re-admittance rate as much as possible. The average period of 13 to 15 days between the pre-anaesthetic consultation and the surgery was sufficient to put in place preoperative nutritional support.

Conclusion

Pre-anaesthetic consultation has therefore become a tool used for preoperative nutritional screening and care.