Impact of nutritional support that does and does not meet guideline standards on clinical outcome in surgical patients at nutritional risk: a prospective cohort study

Table 3 Incidence of complications among subgroups

	Calories or nutritional support not meeting guideline standards (n = 320)		Calories or nutritional support meeting guideline standards (n = 205)		P value
	Nutritional support < 7 days (n = 163)	Calories < 10 kcal (n = 157)	PN + EN ≥ 7 days (n = 135)	PN ≥7 days (n = 70)	P value
Infectious complications	43 (26.3 %) ^a	43 (27.4 %) ^a	17 (12.6 %) ^b	18 (25.7 %) ^a	0.010
Non-infectious complications	3 (1.8 %) ^a	5 (3.2 %) ^a	3 (2.2 %) ^a	6 (8.6 %) ^b	0.050
Total complications	46 (28.2 %) ^a	44 (28.0 %) ^a	17 (12.6 %) ^b	19 (27.1 %) ^a	0.005
Death	2 (1.2 %) ^a	4 (2.5 %) ^a	0 (0.0 %) ^a	2 (2.8 %) a	0.025

Chi-square tests or Fisher’s exact test were used
^adenotes a subset of cohort categories whose column proportions did not differ significantly from each other, P ≥ 0.05
^bdenotes a subset of cohort categories whose column proportions differed significantly from each other, P < 0.05

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