Patients
This was a single-center retrospective study and it was approved by the Medical Institutional Ethics Committee of our hospital. We retrospectively recruited LRC patients who underwent elective abdominoperineal resection with sigmoidostomy at the Department of General Surgery, Taizhou Peoples’ Hospital between May 2016 and May 2019. Each patient was required to offer the signed informed consent. Inclusion criteria: (a) aged between 18–75 years; (b) with a histological diagnosis with LRC (within 8 cm from the anal verge); (c) abdominoperineal resection with sigmoidostomy. Exclusion criteria: (a) with surgical contraindication, e.g. distant metastasis, and severe obstruction; (b) undergoing emergency operations; (c) with malignancies in other systems; (d) with severe hematological, hepatic, kidney disorder, or autoimmune diseases; (e) with preoperative chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or targeted therapy for cancers; (f) with incomplete data. All the patients were under the perioperative management of the same surgical, anesthesia, and nursing team. Protocols of ERAS nursing were according to the latest Chinese guidelines of ERAS (version 2016 and 2018). In brief, preoperative personalized nutritional, counseling, education, psychological status evaluation, and improvement, no overnight fasting and carbohydrate loading drinks before the surgery, intraoperative warming, avoidance of abdominal drains and nasogastric tubes, encouraged early postoperative mobilization, dietary, pain, sleep, and psychology management were recommended. Enrolled patients were followed up for at least three months from the surgical day.
The following data were extracted from our database and recorded: (1) demographic variables including age, gender, body mass index (BMI), smoking and drinking habits; (2) clinical baseline variables including serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grade, Charlson Comorbidity Index (14), nutritional risk score (NRS) -2002 (15); (3) pathological data including T stage, N stage, TNM stage, and pathologic differentiation; (4) treatment-related variables including surgical approach, ERAS nursing, preoperative stoma localization, operation time, estimated blood loss, height of stoma, and base area of stoma; (5) laboratory tests including hemoglobin (Hb), albumin (Alb), white blood cell (WBC), hematocrit (Hct), C-reactive protein (CRP), creatinine, and urea; (6) Chinese hospitalization satisfaction-related variables (11 items) including safety, environment, accessibility, respect, nursing technique, comfortableness, health education, communication, emotion support, participation in nursing, and discharge and referral; (7) prognosis-related variables including time to first exhaust and defecation, LOS, self-rating anxiety scale (SAS) scores, self-rating depression scale (SDS) scores (16), Gastrointestinal Quality of Life Index (GIQLI) (17) including physiological function, mental health, social function, and subjective symptoms at 3 months after the surgery.
As described by previous reports, the primary observational end-point was the occurrence of early major or minor SRCs (within postoperative 30 days). In brief, major SRCs included stoma prolapse, parastomal hernia, stricture, fistula, retraction, ischemia, and bleeding. Minor SRCs included skin alterations according to the classification by SACS™ instrument (ConvaTec, Reading, Berkshire, UK) for assessing peristomal skin lesion (18).
The base area of stoma was measured postoperatively by nurses calculating from the horizontal and vertical size of the stoma base. The pathological TNM stage was identified according to the criteria by the American Joint Committee on Cancer/International Union Against Cancer (7th edition).