The Postsurgical Pain in Elderly Patients Suffering From Undernourishment

INTRODUCTION Undernourishment is the situation when someone does not consume all the essential nutrients for the metabolic functions of the body. It is crystal clear for clinicians that undernourishment is considered as a factor of poor clinical outcome; however, it is being underestimated. The prevalence of it is not the same globally because of the lack of diagnostic criteria. There have been some researchers who have suggested different prognostic and diagnostic scores and laboratory exercises and most of them are now considered reliable. With the rapid growth of elderly population, much more patients of this age group are hospitalized for scheduled or emergent operations. A big percentage suffers from nutritional deficiencies, while an operation is considered as a hypermetabolic period. This worsens the postoperative period even more because of the co-morbidities and prolongs the hospitalization, raises the number of complications and the in-hospital mortality and the health care cost. Pain is one more factor which entangles the postoperative and rehabilitation period, so acute and chronic pain should not been forgotten. There are no data available which relate the acute and chronic postoperative pain with undernourishment, while it would be interesting for us to find out if the treatment of surgical pain in the undernourished patients is efficient. AIM In this non-interventional observational prospective study, the investigators examine the level of postoperative pain, acute or chronic, in undernourished elderly patients and also the incidence of postoperative complications and the possible hospital readmission within 30 days period from the surgical procedure in comparison with the patients with no nutritional deficiencies. The study findings will help us to provide better intraoperative management of undernourished patients in order to achieve a more advantageous postoperative result. METHODS In this study, surgical patients with age ≥70 years old will be s