Prognostic Significance of Preoperative Controlling Nutritional Status Score in Patients Who Underwent Hepatic Resection for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Malnutrition is common in patients with hepatocellualar carcinoma (HCC), and is associated with postoperative complications after hepatectomy, and also increased mortality. However, there is currently no recommendation for assessment of nutritional status in HCC patients. The controlling nutritional status (CONUT) score has been correlated with prognosis in gastrointestinal cancer patients, but there are few reports on the prognostic significance of the CONUT score in patients who underwent hepatectomy for HCC. Existing results show that patients with high CONUT scores who undergo hepatectomy for HCC have poorer survival outcomes, and experience more complications than other patients. In this paper, we review the literature, and reveal that patients who underwent hepatectomy for HCC with high preoperative CONUT scores had poorer outcomes than those with low CONUT scores. Therefore, we conclude that a preoperative CONUT score may be useful for prognostic prediction in patients with HCC undergoing curative hepatectomy.