Nutrition
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Clinical Trial
Selenium blood concentrations in patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery and receiving perioperative sodium selenite.
We recently reported that cardiac surgical patients in our institution exhibited low selenium blood levels preoperatively, which were further aggravated during surgery and independently associated with the development of postoperative multiorgan failure. Low circulating selenium levels result in a decreased antioxidant capacity. Both can be treated effectively by sodium-selenite administration. Little is known about the kinetics of exogenously administered sodium-selenite during acute perioperative oxidative stress. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of perioperative high-dose sodium-selenite administration on selenium blood concentrations in cardiac surgical patients. ⋯ Despite preemptive high-dose sodium-selenite administration, cardiac surgical patients experienced a significant decrease in circulating selenium levels on the first postoperative day.
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We propose an automated nutritional assessment algorithm that provides a method for malnutrition risk prediction with high accuracy and reliability. ⋯ The problem of rapidly identifying risk and severity of malnutrition is crucial for minimizing medical and surgical complications. These are not easily performed or adequately expedited. We characterized for each patient a unique profile and mapped similar patients into a classification. We also found that the laboratory parameters were sufficient for the automated risk prediction.