INTRODUCTION
Despite recent advance in technology and surgical techniques, the
perioperative and in-hospital mortality and morbidity rates of patients
undergoing cardiac surgery remain high1-3. There are
many factors that can cause this increase in risk. Left ventricular
dysfunction, preoperative anemia, chronic renal failure, coronary artery
diameter and advanced age are the most common
causes4-8. Currently, various risk estimation
algorithms are used to evaluate the surgical risk of patients planned
for cardiac surgery. The most commonly used of these are the Society of
Thoracic Surgeons (STS) score and the Euroscore9,10.
While both scores take into account many variables belonging to the
patient, they ignore the clinical nutritional status of the patient. On
the other hand, the patient’s clinical nutritional status is an indirect
indicator of the patient’s resistance and reservoir. This relationship
has been demonstrated especially in patients undergoing gastrointestinal
system and malignancy surgery11,12. Several different
methods, including Mini Nutritional Assessment, Malnutrition Universal
Screening Tool, Subjective Global Assessment, and Short Nutritional
Assessment Questionnaire have been developed for the nutritional status
of patients who undergo malignancy surgery. The prognostic nutritional
index (PNI) is one of them, and it’s the most widely used method. The
PNI, which was first designed by Buzby et al.11 in
1980 and simplified by Onodera et al.13, was
calculated based on the serum albumin concentration and lymphocyte count
of peripheral blood. On the other hand, there are very limited studies
in the literature regarding this evaluation in patients undergoing
cardiac surgery14. Thus the aim of this study was to
assess the value of PNI as a predictor of in hospital mortality and
morbidity in patients undergoing cardiac surgery.