Clinical benefits and controversies of jejunostomy feeding in patients undergoing gastrectomy for gastric cancer

Globally, gastric cancer ranks as the fifth most common malignancy and the third leading cause of cancer-related mortality. Gastrectomy combined with perioperative chemotherapy is currently the standard of care in locally advanced stages, but the completion rate of multimodal approach is influenced also by patient related factors. Malnutrition is a well-known risk factor associated with poor oncological outcomes. Its perioperative supplementation could lead to an improvement of the nutritional status. This article reviews and comments the retrospective study conducted by Jaquet et al, which evaluates the impact of enteral nutrition by jejunostomy feeding in patients undergoing gastrectomy for cancer. The authors included 172 patients, 35% of whom received jejunostomy. Patients with optimized biological nutritional parameters (body mass index, albumin, prealbumin) showed reduced major complications (> III), according to the Dindo-Clavien classification, 0 (0%) vs 8 (4.7%) (P = 0.05). In the era of multimodal treatment, optimization of nutritional and performance status is integral part of the therapeutic strategy.