A Clinical Investigation of the Association between Perioperative Oral Management and Prognostic Nutritional Index in Patients with Digestive and Urinary Cancers

Background: The prognostic nutritional index (PNI) is a simple metric calculated using serum albumin and the peripheral lymphocyte count. It was reported that a low PNI score is significantly associated with major postoperative complications and poor prognosis. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of perioperative oral management (POM) on the perioperative PNI profiles of patients with digestive system or urinary cancers. Study Design: The medical records of 181 patients with cancer who underwent surgery and for whom a PNI could be calculated were retrospectively reviewed. Results: The intervention rate with POM was 34.8%. The median preoperative PNI score was 48.25 in all patients with a POM intervention [25% to 75% interquartile range (IQR): 44.38–54.13] and 47.25 in those without an intervention (IQR: 42.0–53.5). Compared with patients not receiving POM, those who received POM had significantly higher PNI scores from the early postoperative period (p < 0.05). Notably, of patients who could resume oral intake within 3 days after surgery, those who received POM intervention, compared with those who did not, had significantly higher PNI scores from the early postoperative period (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Perioperative oral management interventions might have positive effects on the postoperative PNI scores of patients with cancer.