Blood metabolomic profiling predicts postoperative gastrointestinal function of colorectal surgical patients under the guidance of goal-directed fluid therapy

Postoperative gastrointestinal function influences postoperative recovery and length of hospital stay for patients undergoing colorectal surgery. Goal-directed fluid therapy (GDFT) restricts fluid administration to an amount required to prevent dehydration. Although the fluid management of GDFT could decrease the incidence of postoperative complications in patients who undergo high-risk surgery, certain patients may not respond to GDFT. Thus, to achieve optimal treatment, identification of patients suitable for GDFT is necessary. Metabolomic profiling of 48 patients undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer was performed. Patients were divided into delayed- and enhanced-recovered groups based on gastrointestinal function within 72 hours, and the results of omics analysis showed differential serum metabolites between the two groups of patients in the post anesthesia care unit 24 hours after surgery. A support vector machine model was applied to evaluate the curative effects of GDFT in different patients. Four metabolites, oleamide, ubiquinone-1, acetylcholine, and oleic acid, were found to be highly associated with postoperative gastrointestinal function and could be used as potential biomarkers. Moreover, four pathways were found to be highly related to postoperative gastrointestinal recovery. Among them, the vitamin B6 metabolism pathway may be a common pathway for improving postoperative recovery in various diseases. Our findings proposed a novel method to predict postoperative recovery of gastrointestinal function based on metabolomic profiling and suggested the potential mechanisms contributing to gastrointestinal function after surgical resection of colorectal cancer under the fluid management of GDFT.