Total lymphocyte count and its relationship with clinical and nutritional parameters in patients undergoing surgical procedures.

Abstract

Objective: To assess the relationship between total lymphocyte count and clinical and nutritional variables in patients undergoing surgical procedures.
Methods: Cross-sectional study, carried out in the surgical clinic of the Hospital Universitário Professor Alberto Antunes - AL. The total lymphocyte count was obtained
from a pre-established formula, allowing the classification
of the level of malnutrition as mild to severe depletion.
Sociodemographic, clinical and anthropometric data were
obtained to check possible statistical significance with the
total lymphocyte count. The value of 5% was adopted to
reject the null hypothesis (p<0.05).
Results: The sample comprised 109 patients, 54.1% female, with a mean age of 54.4±14.3 years. According to the
total lymphocyte count, 47.7% (n=50) of patients presented
some degree of depletion, a condition evident mainly in males (58.3% in men versus 38.6% in women; p=0.044). There was an association between the clinical outcome and the total lymphocyte count, where malnourished patients presented higher frequency of hospital discharge without undergoing the surgical procedure (p=0.017). In an analysis stratified by the level of lymphocytometry depletion, those classified in the moderate to severe categories presented eutrophy or malnutrition according to BMI (p=0.008), malnutrition according to the corrected arm muscle area (p=0.031) and by the thickness of the dominant adductor pollicis muscle (p=0.048). The total lymphocyte count correlated with albumin (p<0.001).
Conclusions: Total lymphocyte count, in the moderate to
severe categories, was significant with conventional anthropometric parameters and correlated with serum albumin levels in surgical patients. It is noteworthy that the studied marker can be easily obtained from blood count values, an exam routinely performed preoperatively.