Malnourished lung cancer patients have poor baseline functional capacity but show greatest improvements with multimodal prehabilitation

Objective The objective is to characterize the presence of malnutrition, examine the association between malnutrition and baseline functional capacity (FC), and the extent to which patients benefit from preoperative multimodal prehabilitation in patients undergoing lung resection for cancer. Methods Data from 162 participants enrolled in multimodal prehabilitation or control before lung cancer surgery were analyzed. Malnutrition was measured using the Patient‐Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG‐SGA) according to triage levels: low‐nutrition‐risk (PG‐SGA 0‐3), moderate‐nutrition‐risk (4–8) and high‐nutrition‐risk (≥9). Baseline differences in FC, measured by the 6‐minute walk test (6MWT), were compared. Factorial analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to examine the effect of nutrition status and intervention on mean change in 6MWT preoperatively. Results 51.2% patients were considered low‐nutrition‐risk, 37.7% moderate‐nutrition‐risk, and 11.1% high‐nutrition‐risk. Low‐nutrition‐risk patients had significantly higher 6MWT at baseline (mean of 484 m [standard deviation (SD) = 88]) compared with moderate‐nutrition‐risk (432 m [SD = 107], P = .005) and high‐nutrition‐risk groups (416 m [SD = 90], P = .022). The adjusted mean change in 6MWT between prehabilitation vs control was 18.1 (95% confidence interval, 3.8 to 32.3) vs 5.6 m (–14.1 to 25.4) in low‐nutrition‐risk (P = .309), 28.5 (11 to 46) vs –4 m (–31.3 to 23.4) in moderate‐nutrition‐risk (P = .053), and 58.9 (16.7 to 101.2) vs –39.7 m (–80.2 to 0.826) in high‐nutrition‐risk group (P = .001). Conclusions Lung cancer patients at high‐nutrition‐risk awaiting surgery had significantly lower baseline FC compared with low‐nutrition‐risk patients but experienced significant improvements in preoperative FC upon receiving multimodal prehabilitation.