Background: Sarcopenia is defined as the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle and can be measured using the cross sectional diameter of the psoas muscle as found on computed tomography. This measure of preoperative nutritional status has been found to impact peri-and postoperative outcomes in a variety of surgeries including pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD). We propose sarcopenia acts as an independent factor predictive of delayed gastric emptying (DGE) after PD. Methods: A prospectively maintained database of all patients undergoing elective pancreaticoduodenectomy at our single surgeon centre was conducted. For each patient, the grade of delayed gastric emptying and the preoperative cross sectional diameter of psoas muscle at the lower border of L4 on preoperative imaging was calculated. Results: Of the 57 patients included, 17 (29.8%) were classified as sarcopenic. In total, 12 patients (21.1%) suffered DGE of whom 9 were had sarcopenia (p = 0.007). Sarcopenia was more common in women (p = 0.001) although not the obese (p = 0.092) or patients with hypoalbuminaemia (p = 0.118). Ductal adenocarcinoma was found in 39 of the cases and was not significantly associated with DGE (p = 0.315). Conclusion: Our preliminary analysis suggests that sarcopenia is a predictor of DGE after PD. Other factors, such as pathological diagnosis, did not appear to hold predictive value. Further investigation into the nature of this relationship is warranted.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.