Correlation of postoperative fluid balance and weight and their impact on outcomes

Fluid management standards in patients undergoing major surgery have changed in the last years. Several studies revealed a direct relationship between perioperative fluid balance and postoperative adverse events [1‐6]. Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) is a multimodal care pathway aiming to reduce perioperative stress response to decrease surgery-related morbidity. Among a multitude of measures aiming to simplify perioperative care, ERAS protocols endorse restrictive fluid management [7‐11]. However, fluid management remains poorly defined and highly variable among institutions [12].

Postoperative fluid overload is a common problem in surgical patients, and physicians need reproducible, easy to monitor tools to prevent early complications and to guide further therapies. In clinical practice, daily fluid balances, diuresis, and body weight are commonly used to guide fluid management and diuretics therapy [13‐15], but some studies showed that these two surveillance tools may disagree [16‐18]. Considering the potential for calculation errors and imprecision with regard to insensible fluid losses, stool quantity etc., monitoring body weight may be more representative to identify fluid overload and associated postoperative complications.

Albumin is considered a negative acute-phase protein because its concentration decreases during injury and sepsis. The decrease of serum albumin was shown to be associated with postoperative outcomes and reflect extent of surgery [19‐21]. Δ Albumin was used in the present study as a surrogate to correlate the impact of surgery to the fluid balances and weight evolution.

The aim of this study was to analyze daily weight variations and fluid balance during the first 3 postoperative days (PODs) after major surgery in a surgical intermediate care unit (IMC) of a high-volume institution and to correlate both measures to each other and postoperative outcomes. Whether one measure is preferable or more reliable than the other has not yet been assessed in the specific setting of a surgical intermediate care unit.

Consecutive adult (≥ 18 years) patients undergoing elective or emergency major abdominal surgery (general anesthesia, > 2 h) with a request of direct postoperative surgical IMC at Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) from 4 September 2017 to 30 January 2018 were eligible.

Patients hospitalized in external IMC wards outside the dedicated visceral surgery unit, patients remaining in the postanesthesia care unit (PACU) beyond the usual immediate postoperative surveillance period of 2 h, patients immediately admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) for postoperative surveillance, and patients without informed consent for research participation were excluded. This is due to the data allocation and consistency with medical personal. In our institution, postoperative patients in the ICU and PACU are primarily managed by intensive care physicians and anesthetists, respectively, and therefore the patient’s weight protocols (i.e., timing, staffing, balance) are different. Patient admission to either ICU or IMC depends on multidisciplinary clinical evaluation postoperatively after the routine 2-h PACU surveillance period. Patients were admitted to the divisional surgical IMC (visceral surgery) based on this assessment.

This study was conducted as part of an institutional quality improvement project and data extraction was approved by the local Review Board (Commission cantonale d’éthique de la recherche sur l’être humain CER-VD # 2018-00249).

Demographic and surgical data of each patient were reported in a prospective database. Body mass index (BMI) and American Association of Anesthesiology (ASA) classification were calculated during preoperative anesthesiologic evaluation. Surgical details including duration and type of surgery were recorded. The duration of the procedure (from incision to closure) was recorded at the time of surgery either by the surgeon or the anesthetist in the institutional OR management software. All procedures were performed (either directly or under face-to-face supervision) by senior staff members of the respective surgical specialty.

Analysis of cumulative fluid balance, weight evolution, and composition of inputs/outputs were conducted only on patients with IMC stay of at least 72 h.

This retrospective analysis showed a weak correlation between postoperative fluid balance and weight change. No correlation was found between postoperative weight gain and complications. However, increasing weight gain positively correlated with prolonged length of hospital stay.

In clinical practice, both daily fluid balance and body weight are used to guide fluid therapy [13‐15]. Whether the more complex and detailed calculation of fluid balance or simply postoperative weight evolution is more predictive remains matter of debate. Calculation of fluid balance is complex, imprecise, and can be prone to systematic error. Considering the potential for errors due to insensible fluid losses when calculating fluid balance, the objective, and reproducible weight-based method may be more representative. Obtaining a reliable body weight measurement requires compliance by nursing staff, which is, sometimes, difficult for the workload and patient’s clinical presentation, especially for hemodynamic condition. In our experience, only 14% of patients were not weighed at POD 1, but all of them were discharged from IMC before 12 h, and all patients were weighted at POD3. These results could be explained by the routine use of the ERAS protocol since several years, which focuses particularly on early postoperative mobilization of the patient already at the day of surgery, also if hemodynamic support is needed. In the present study, the correlation between cumulative fluid balance and weight gain in the first three postoperative days was weak. As illustrated in Fig. 3a, the evolution of cumulative fluid balance appears to be almost identical to weight gain through PODs 1–3, and Fig. 3b shows a low correlation between fluid balance at POD 1 and weight at POD 2. This can be explained by limitations related to the small sample size. Furthermore, these findings suggest that daily weight may be a simpler and more objective way to measure postoperative fluid shifts. Several studies have reported a lack of accuracy in calculating fluid balances. Perren et al. [33], in a study of 147 patients carried out in ICU, revealed that daily and cumulative fluid balance were arithmetically incorrect in one third of cases. Similarly, Köster et al. [16] found that cumulative daily fluid balances did not correspond with weight changes in 106 ICU patients with length of ICU stay > 5 days, even after consideration of insensible fluid losses. Tolstrup et al. [17] revealed a significant discrepancy between the two techniques on postoperative day 5 (> 2000 g/mL).

In the present study, positive fluid balance reflected the extent of surgery (duration, Δ albumin). This is in line with recent studies stressing the relationship between surgical stress and postoperative albumin decrease. Mantziari et al. [34] reported on 70 patients undergoing seven different surgical interventions to show a correlation between surgical stress and biomarkers (CRP, albumin, and triglycerides). However, only albumin changes (delta albumin) correlated with surgical access, peritoneal trauma, and organ resections. Lagbaa et al. [19] analyzed 138 patients undergoing major surgery and found a correlation between Δ albumin and surgical stress. Further, the decrease of serum albumin was closely associated with postoperative adverse outcomes in their analysis.

As illustrated in Fig. 4, the findings of the present study show a significant correlation between POD 2 fluid balance and both postoperative albumin decrease and operative time. This can be explained by the surgical stress response, which induces inflammatory and hormonal perturbation, which in consequence impacts on salt and water metabolism [35]. Furthermore, a tendency to normalization of weight at POD 3 as seen in Fig. 4 was observed. This may reflect, besides the end of the early post-operative inflammatory response, early triggering of counter-regulatory measures (i.e. diuretic therapy) and interruption of IV infusion routinely initiated during surgery, in line with the ERAS protocol [7‐11, 36]. Similar findings were described by Tolstrup et al. [17]: in their study, patient’s weight decreased after POD3 while discrepancy between body weight and fluid balance increased.

The population of the present study was separated in two groups, based on the length of IMC stay. The two groups differed regarding surgical details (malignancy, open approach, operation duration), but also BMI. This BMI difference can be explained by the institutional policy to systematically monitor bariatric patients with untreated sleeping apnea for 24 h in IMC (12 patients, 10.8%).

The association between highly positive fluid balance and poor outcome has been previously observed. Several studies reported that positive fluid balance may result in worse outcome and prolonged length of stay [5, 8]. Köster et al. [16] confirmed these results and showed increased survival and reduced ICU stay in all comers experiencing weight loss of 1.8 kg at the time of discharge. Our group previously studied effects of fluid balance on postoperative outcomes after ileostomy takedown. Both excess fluids and weight gain were found to be independent predictors of postoperative ileus and emphasize the importance of stringent fluid management [6].

Weinberg et al. [37] studied 150 patients after Whipple’s procedure and found better outcomes in terms of length of hospital stay and postoperative complications in patients with restrictive fluid management.

The present study further suggests that excessive weight gain may be associated with prolonged IMC and hospital stay, but our observations need to be confirmed by adequately powered studies, as seen in Fig. 6.

Postoperative complications were more common after open surgery and in malnourished patients as shown in Table 1, while no significant association with weight gain was observed as displayed in Fig. 5. Potential explanations include routine use of ERAS protocols in our institution, with implementation of a wide array of measures to counteract positive fluid balances early in the postoperative course, including IV fluid lock at POD1 and both early resumption of oral intake and mobilization [7‐11, 36].

This study has several limitations. The modest simple size makes the study prone to type II error, and larger studies are needed to confirm these preliminary data. This pilot study may be underpowered for some of the secondary outcomes, which were only assessed in the subgroup of patients with ≥ 3 days of IMC stay. This has to be considered when interpreting the results, and future prospective studies with predefined, adequate sample sizes for the respective outcome of interest are mandatory. Furthermore, the specific setting of a surgical IMC unit potentially represents a selection bias and thus the results of the present study cannot be uncritically extrapolated to other care settings (i.e., ICU, general wards). The study is further limited by its retrospective design, despite thorough prospective data gathering. Arguably, the study cohort is heterogeneous, however reflecting the diverse surgical activity of the present institution.

The present study suggests that postoperative weight evolution may be sufficient as surveillance tool to predict complications in the early postoperative course. Larger studies are needed to confirm these results.