Abstract

LLAMES, Lucía. Nutritional management of esophagectomy complicated by chylothorax. Diaeta [online]. 2009, vol.27, n.128, pp.22-25. ISSN 1852-7337.

Perioperative nutrition in digestive tract surgery (esophagectomy) is a basic pillar as regards therapeutic measures, considering a high percentage of affected patients have preoperative malnutrition and since the correlation between inadequate preoperative intake and postoperative complications is widely known. Chylothorax is an unusual complication; it has a considerable mortality rate due to nutritional, immunological and body fluids alterations. Although the appropriate treatment is controversial, traditional principles in this treatment consist in reducing chyle flow, draining the pleural cavity, preventing sepsis complications and providing enteral nutrition with medium chain triglycerides (MCT), which go directly to the portal system. Total parenteral nutrition is the option when oral/enteral nutrition has failed. In this paper, a clinical case is introduced where a woman had esophagectomy which evolved into chylothorax at the postoperative stage, and the nutritional management applied is described.

Keywords : Esophagectomy; Chylothorax; Nutritional assessment; Dietotherapy; Medium chain triglycerides.

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