The effects of nutritional support team intervention on postoperative immune function, nutritional statuses, inflammatory responses, clinical outcomes of elderly patients with gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: To explore the effects of nutrition support team (NST) intervention on elderly patients with gastric cancer (GC). METHODS: The elderly GC patients (tumor stage I/II/III), admitted to our department from January 2015 to September 2021, were retrospectively analyzed and divided into NST group and traditional nutrition (TN) group according to nutritional management methods. The immune, inflammatory, nutrition-related indices, postoperative recovery and long-term prognosis of two groups were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 258 elderly GC patients were included (NST group, n = 125; TN group, n = 133). After propensity score matching (PSM) in ratio of 1:1, 73 pairs of patients were matched. There were statistically significant differences in CD3 and CD4 level postoperative one month and IgG level postoperative one week between NST group and TN group (P < 0.05). There was no significant differences in serum CRP and IL-6 levels preoperative one day, postoperative one week and one month between two groups (P > 0.05). There were significant differences in body mass index (BMI) between the two groups postoperative one month (P < 0.05). The rate of infectious complications in TN group was significantly higher than that in NST group (P < 0.05). There was no statistically significant differences in 3-year relapse-free survival (RFS) or 3-year overall survival (OS) between NST group and TN group (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with TN management, NST intervention might be benefit to the immune function recovery and nutritional status, but there was no evidence that NST could improve the prognosis of elderly GC patients.