Nutrition management of geriatric surgical patients.

Surgery in geriatric patients is accompanied by increases in morbidity and mortality, increases in functional abnormalities and poor outcomes, and increases in severe malnutrition, compared with surgery of similar magnitude in nongeriatric patients. Hospitalized elderly patients are at significant risk of presenting with, or developing, protein-energy and other nutrient deficiencies. However, nutritional assessment of older geriatric patients, 65 to 100 years of age, is a challenging task because of lack of adequate age-specific reference data in this diverse and heterogeneous population. Dietary counseling and conscientious, aggressive nutritional support are required for optimal metabolic and surgical care of this age group.