Objective: Malnutrition is common among surgical patients. It decreases surgical treatment, leads to poor clinical outcome, and especially substantially affects morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to assess nutritional risk in surgical patients.

Methods: This study was prospectively conducted in general surgery clinic. Patients aged above 18 years or more were included. Post-admission, data collection also included information on nutritional support and diagnosis of patients. A nutritional risk screening system (NRS-2002) was applied to all patients, and it was weekly repeated in patients with hospital stays more than one week.

Results: We enrolled 624 patients. Among them, 296 were male (47.4%), and 328 were female (52.6%). The mean age was 53.13±16.63 years. The route for nutrition was oral in 59.6% and enteral/parenteral in 4.8%. However, 35.6% of the patients received no nutritional support. Nutritional risk was recorded for 304 patients (73.4%) in first week and 46 patients (22.1%) in second week. Nutritional risk increased with age (p<0.05). There was nutritional risk in 193 patients (62.7%) with major abdominal surgery and 50 patients (46.7%) with hypertension. Additionally, there was nutritional risk in 162 patients (54.9%) who received oral diet.

Conclusions: Nutritional risk in the first week was very high in the patients. High nutritional risk was related to age, major abdominal surgery, and hypertension.

Keywords: Major abdominal surgery, malnutrition, minor abdominal surgery, nutritional risk screening