Nutrition Assessment and Management of Left Ventricular Assist Device Patients

Perioperative Hypoalbuminemia Affects Improvement in Exercise Tolerance After Left Ventricular Assist Device Implantation

“…14 LVAD candidates often suffer from long-term HF before surgery, with restricted daily activity and decreased peripheral perfusion, which also enhances atrophy of skeletal muscle from disuse syndrome. 15 Atrophic skeletal muscle increases consumption of S-ALB, which results in a decrease in the S-ALB level. 16, 17 Under such circumstances, PV O2 is significantly reduced by skeletal muscle dysfunction.…”

“…Particularly, a precise nutrition assessment and prophylactic aggressive intervention prior to LVAD implantation may improve postoperative exercise tolerance. 15 Second, patients assigned to INTERMACS profile 1 were not enrolled in the present study because such a population is not allowed to receive an I-CF LVAD in Japan. 23 Similarly, those aged over 65 years were not enrolled, 23 and the conclusions may not be applicable in this population.…”

Novel Risk Scoring System With Preoperative Objective Parameters Gives a Good Prediction of 1-Year Mortality in Patients With a Left Ventricular Assist Device

“…We classified the patients into 3 strata according to TVAD score (ie, low (score 0-8), intermediate (score [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], and high (score 18-26) risk strata). Figure 2A depicts the Kaplan-Meier survival curves and the 1-year survival was significantly different among 3 strata (95%, 54%, and 14%, respectively) with log-rank test (all P<0.001).…”

Ventricular Assist Device-Specific Infections

“…Post-operative nutritional status is critical to patient success and is known to influence morbidity and mortality in surgical patients (Holdy et al, 2005). Nutritional supplementation, either oral or parenteral, should be instituted as soon as possible after surgery.…”