• Xiangyang Xu, Boyao Zhang, Mengwei Tan, Xingli Fan, Qian Chen, Zhiyun Xu, Yangfeng Tang, and Lin Han.
• Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China.
• Shock. 2024 Aug 14.

BackgroundThe treatment strategy of early nutritional support after cardiac surgery has gradually been adopted. However, there are no scientific guidelines for the timing and specific programs of early nutritional support.MethodsA retrospective, single-center analysis (2021-2023) was carried out including elderly patients who were admitted for valvular heart disease (VHD) and received open-heart valve replacement surgery. We designated patients who started the optimized nutritional support after surgery as the EN group and those who received traditional nutritional support as the TN group. The nutritional and immune indexes, postoperative complications, length of hospital stay, and hospitalization cost of the two groups were compared and analyzed.ResultsWe identified 378 eligible patients, comprising 193 (51%) patients in the EN group and 185 (49%) patients in the TN group. There was no significant difference in hospital mortality between the two groups, but the proportion of nosocomial pneumonia was significantly lower in the EN group than in the TN group (P < 0.001). In the Poisson regression analysis, EN was not associated with an increase in gastrointestinal complications (P = 0.549). The EN group also seemed to have shorter hospital stays and lower hospitalization expenses (P < 0.001). In the comparison of postoperative gastrointestinal complications, fewer patients experienced diarrhea (P = 0.021) and abdominal distension (P = 0.033) in the EN group compared with the TN group.ConclusionThe optimal nutritional support strategy could effectively improve the clinical outcome of high-risk patients with valvular heart disease.Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Shock Society.

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