P188 Evaluation of Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria for the diagnosis of malnutrition in patients affected by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) candidates for elective surgery

C. Fiorindi1, M. Cricchio2, F. Ficari2, G. Alpigiano2, S. Scaringi2, F. Giudici3

1Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 2Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine – Florence, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 3Department of experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, Fiesole, Italy

Background

In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), malnutrition has been associated with increased postoperative complications incidence, longer hospital stay and higher costs. ESPEN guidelines recommend that all IBD patients must be screened for malnutrition. Recently, so-called GLIM criteria were developed to uniform malnutrition diagnosis. Our aim was to determine the prevalence of malnutrition comparing the different malnutrition criteria.

Methods

The nutritional status of all IBD patients’ candidates to surgery in our Centre during 2019 was assessed. According to the GLIM criteria, the diagnosis of malnutrition is based on the presence of almost one phenotypic criteria (non-volitional weight loss, low body mass index and reduced muscle mass) and almost one aetiologic criteria (reduced food intake or assimilation; biochemical inflammation). The results were compared with that found adopting ESPEN 2015 criteria for malnutrition to evaluate their concordance.

Results

Fifty-three consecutive IBD patients [38 Crohn’s disease (CD) and 15 ulcerative colitis (UC)] were evaluated. The average values of Body Mass Index, Free Fat Mass Index ad Phase Angle were 22.69 kg/m2, 17.6 kg/m2 and 5.8° respectively. According to the Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS) test 40% (21 patients) of patients were at high nutritional risk. Forty-five per cent (24 patients) were malnourished according to GLIM criteria (14 with severe malnutrition and 10 with moderate malnutrition), while according to the ESPEN criteria only 26% (14 patients) (Table 1). The correlation between GLIM and ESPEN, calculated with the Cohen’s kappa coefficient (k) was moderate/good (k 0,605).

Conclusion

GLIM criteria indicate higher prevalence of malnutrition than ESPEN criteria. Interestingly, the same 14 patients malnourished for ESPEN have severe malnutrition (Stage 2) according to GLIM. Furthermore, seven malnourished patients according to GLIM criteria are not considered at nutritional risk according to NRS, probably because it does not consider the muscle mass loss. Patients with CD have a higher prevalence of aetiological factors, while UC patients have a higher prevalence of phenotypic factors. Malnutrition prevalence was higher in UC probably due to the ileostomy present before second-stage surgery 4 months after subtotal colectomy in acute severe cases. The concordance between GLIM and ESPEN 2015 appears moderate/good.