Nutrition to Support Postoperative Recovery

Older surgical patients commonly have malnutrition, and there is evidence these patients have increased risk for poor physical and brain recovery after surgery and anesthesia. There are scientific-based recommendations to provide nutritional supplements to support recovery. However, to date these recommendations do not address a broad group of nutrients likely to reverse common deficiencies. Team members have created a palatable, broad-spectrum and stable nutritional shake that we will give to patients after surgery. We propose to test the nutritional shake in frail older surgical patients at Dartmouth Health to determine if a nutrition shake provided after surgery improves recovery of physical function and cognitive abilities. Half the patients will receive the shake and the other will receive the standard of care postoperative nutritional instructions after surgery. We will collect information regarding physical function and cognitive abilities of all the patients while in the hospital and 90 days after surgery. We will use this data to apply for funding for a powered randomized trial to determine the role of nutrition in optimizing physical and cognitive recovery from surgery in older patients.

NCT Number	NCT07109505
Lead Sponsor	Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Collaborators: Hitchcock Foundation
Conditions	Postoperative Care, Postoperative Complications, Cognition, Nutritional Assessment, Nutritional Intervention
Enrollment	100 participants
Start Date	2025-12-10
Primary Completion	2026-09-30 (estimated)
Study Completion	2026-09-30 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2026-02-11