The objective of this thesis is to make a first step towards prevention of the progression of chronic venous disease and the development of a first venous leg ulcer in chronic venous disease patients. The aim is to identify chronic venous disease patients at risk of developing more severe clinical stages, provide insight in the lifestyle related risk factors, and provide an overview of current chronic venous disease care in the Netherlands.
Multimodal prehabilitation programs to improve physical fitness before surgery often include nutritional interventions. This study evaluates the efficacy of and adherence to a nutritional intervention among colorectal and esophageal cancer patients undergoing the multimodal Fit4Surgery prehabilitation program. The intervention aims to achieve an intake of ≥1.5 g of protein/kg body weight (BW) per day through dietary advice and daily nutritional supplementation (30 g whey protein). This study shows 56.3% of patients met this goal after prehabilitation. Mean daily protein intake significantly increased from 1.20 ± 0.39 g/kg BW at baseline to 1.61 ± 0.41 g/kg BW after prehabilitation (p < 0.001), with the main increase during the evening snack. BW, BMI, 5-CST, and protein intake at baseline were associated with adherence to the nutritional intervention. These outcomes suggest that dietary counseling and protein supplementation can significantly improve protein intake in different patient groups undergoing a multimodal prehabilitation program.
Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the predictive value of PMA measurement for mortality. Background: Current surgical risk stratification have limited predictive value in the transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) population. In TAVI workup, a CT scan is routinely performed but body composition is not analyzed. Psoas muscle area (PMA) reflects a patient's global muscle mass and accordingly PMA might serve as a quantifiable frailty measure. Methods: Multi-slice computed tomography scans (between 2010 and 2016) of 583 consecutive TAVI patients were reviewed. Patients were divided into equal sex-specific tertiles (low, mid, and high) according to an indexed PMA. Hazard ratios (HR) and their confidence intervals (CI) were determined for cardiac and all-cause mortality after TAVI. Results: Low iPMA was associated with cardiac and all-cause mortality in females. One-year adjusted cardiac mortality HR in females for mid-iPMA and high-iPMA were 0.14 [95%CI, 0.05–0.45] and 0.40 [95%CI, 0.15–0.97], respectively. Similar effects were observed for 30-day and 2-years cardiac and all-cause mortality. In females, adding iPMA to surgical risk scores improved the predictive value for 1-year mortality. C-statistics changed from 0.63 [CI = 0.54–0.73] to 0.67 [CI: 0.58–0.75] for EuroSCORE II and from 0.67 [CI: 0.59–0.77] to 0.72 [CI: 0.63–0.80] for STS-PROM. Conclusions: Particularly in females, low iPMA is independently associated with an higher all-cause and cardiac mortality. Prospective studies should confirm whether PMA or other body composition parameters should be extracted automatically from CT-scans to include in clinical decision making and outcome prediction for TAVI.
