Nutrition Supplementation in Cardiovascular Surgery Patients

Summary

Participation Requirements

Description

Cardiovascular surgery (CVS) is a resource intensive modality in the treatment of coronary artery disease and valvular heart disease. CVS patients who are malnourished experience increased duration of cardiopulmonary bypass, post-operative infections, impaired wound healing, muscle wasting, longer l...

Cardiovascular surgery (CVS) is a resource intensive modality in the treatment of coronary artery disease and valvular heart disease. CVS patients who are malnourished experience increased duration of cardiopulmonary bypass, post-operative infections, impaired wound healing, muscle wasting, longer lengths of intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stay, higher readmission rates, higher treatment costs and marked increases in mortality. Despite the devastating effects of malnutrition in these patients, physicians and health care practitioners are poor in respect to identification, monitoring and treatment of malnutrition. In two large tertiary hospitals in Ontario, this will be a randomized trial of a novel nutritional pathway to rapidly identify at-risk CVS patients pre-operatively, and then provide oral nutritional supplementation (ONS) during the 30 days prior to surgery, then continue supplementation throughout hospitalization until discharge. Meaningful patient-centered and economic outcomes will be examined.

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