ArticleFrontiers in nutrition2026
Preoperative nutritional status, frailty, and postoperative delirium in patients undergoing pancreatic cancer surgery: a prospective observational study.
Article in Frontiers in nutrition, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Postoperative delirium (POD) is a common neuropsychiatric complication after major abdominal surgery and is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. Patients undergoing pancreatic cancer surgery are particularly vulnerable to nutritional impairment and physiological decline, both of which may increase susceptibility to POD. Frailty reflects reduced physiological reserve and may be associated with both poor nutritional status and postoperative cognitive vulnerability. However, whether frailty helps explain the association between preoperative nutritional status and POD remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the association between preoperative nutritional status and POD and to explore the role of frailty in this relationship. Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted among patients who underwent elective pancreatic cancer surgery at a tertiary hospital in Jiangsu Province, China, between August 2023 and March 2024. Preoperative nutritional status was assessed using the prognostic nutritional index (PNI), and frailty was evaluated using the FRAIL scale. POD was assessed twice daily from postoperative day 1 to postoperative day 4 using the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM). Multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify factors independently associated with POD. Mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS macro version 5.0 (Model 4) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to evaluate the potential mediating role of frailty in the association between PNI and POD. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was carried out to assess the predictive performance of PNI, frailty score, and their combined model. Results: A total of 293 patients were included, among whom 57 (19.5%) developed POD. In the multivariable logistic regression model, higher frailty score (OR = 2.451, 95% CI: 1.442-4.164, Conclusion: Frailty was independently associated with postoperative delirium in patients undergoing pancreatic cancer surgery and serves as a potential pathway linking poor preoperative nutritional status to POD. Poorer nutritional status may be associated with POD susceptibility partly through frailty. Although adding PNI to frailty slightly increased the AUC, it did not provide statistically significant incremental discriminative value beyond frailty alone.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.