People receiving multiple surgeries during an extended hospital stay can become malnourished, due to repeated fasting Malnourishment increases these patients’ risk of death It also causes them to recover more slowly afterward MONDAY, Oct. 21, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- The repeated fasting required for multiple surgeries in a row can slow a patient’s recovery and increase the risk of death, a new study warns. Surgical patients are asked to not eat after midnight prior to their procedure, to reduce the risk that they’ll throw up during general anesthesia and deep sedation.
But folks having multiple surgeries during the same hospital stay are more likely to suffer malnutrition as a result of all this fasting, researchers found. “Our research determined that repeated fasting in hospitalized patients having multiple orthopedic surgeries over days or weeks increases the risk for protein-calorie malnutrition, leading to longer hospital stays, slower recovery and higher health care costs,” said lead researcher Ivie Izekor , a fourth-year medical student at Texas A&M College of Medicine. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 28.
5 million patients who had any type of orthopedic surgery in a hospital between 2016 and 2019. Of those patients, more than 1.8 million were diagnosed with malnutrition after admission.
Patients diagnosed with malnutrition had gone through more surgeries during their hospital stay -- an average of 2.3 surgeries per stay, compared with near.