Carbohydrate Loading and Elderly Patients Undergoing Spine Surgery

Carbohydrate loading, the consumption of carbohydrates prior to surgery, is an example of preoperative nutrition that has provided many benefits to surgical patients. Because of this, preoperative carbohydrate loading has been included in the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) and Enhanced Recovery Canada (ERC) guidelines across a variety of surgical specialities; however, a gap in the literature remains within the field of orthopaedic surgery, specifically in cervical and thoracolumbar spine surgeries. Elderly patients (65 years of age and older) represent a large number of spine surgery recipients and due to the unique aspects of aging, proper preoperative nutrition is essential for this patient demographic. The goal of this research study is to determine if preoperative carbohydrate loading provides benefits to elderly patients through decreasing length of stay (LOS) in hospital and reducing perioperative patient adverse events, when undergoing orthopaedic spine surgeries. This is an ambispective research study including elderly patients from the Canadian Spine Outcomes and Research Network (CSORN) registry, who have either recently undergone, or are scheduled to undergo, an orthopaedic cervical or thoracolumbar spine surgery (fusion, decompression, or discectomy). The control group will include retrospectively recruited patients, and the carbohydrate (CHO) group will include prospectively recruited patients, who will consume a carbohydrate drink up to 2 hours prior to surgery. Groups will also be matched based on various patient demographic and surgical variables. LOS in hospital and perioperative patient adverse events are the outcome measurements of interest. Patient and surgical variables will also be collected for comparison. It is expected that preoperative carbohydrate loading in elderly patients receiving an orthopaedic spine surgery (fusion, decompression, or discectomy) will lead to greater outcomes through decreasing LOS in hospital and reducing perioperative patient adverse events compared to patients who did not receive preoperative carbohydrate loading.