Introduction/Background Prognostic nutritional index (PNI) has been investigated extensively in the field of cancer and seems to be associated both with the extent of disease, perioperative wellbeing of patients as well as with postoperative disease survival. Its value in ovarian cancer patients remains to date unclear. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of PNI in detecting metastases in the upper abdominal cavity and correlate its levels to postoperative hospitalization duration.

Methodology A retrospectively identified consecutive series of patients that were treated in our institution for ovarian cancer was used for analysis. Preoperative PNI was calculated as serum albumin (g/L) + 0.005 × lymphocyte count (per mm³). Inferential statistics were performed with non-parametric tests and correlation analysis was based in Spearman’s rho.

Results Overall, 50 patients were included in our analysis with a mean PNI of 41.2±0.7 and a mean age of 62±1.8 years. No differences were observed in PNI levels among patients with ascites (p= 0.807), metastases in the upper abdominal cavity (p= 0.658) as well as among patients at various stages of the disease. Correlation statistics did not reveal significant associations between PNI and postoperative high dependency unit hospitalization (rho=0.181, p= 0.271) and total duration of hospitalization (rho=0.081, p= 0.630), age (rho=−0.239, p= 0.143). The area under the curve (AUC) for detecting metastases in the upper abdominal cavity was poor (AUC=0.456) as well as for cases requiring bowel excision (AUC=0.525).

Conclusion The findings of our study do not support the use of prognostic nutritional index as a tool for the preoperative assessment of ovarian cancer patients as it does not seem to correlate with the extent of disease and postoperative hospitalization. Larger studies are needed to support our findings and help reach definitive conclusions.

Disclosure Nothing to disclose.