AccScience Publishing / EJMO / Volume 6 / Issue 3 / DOI: 10.14744/ejmo.2022.47068
LETTER TO THE EDITOR

When Appearances Can be Deceiving: Sarcopenia and Obesity Paradox. Unsolved Issues in Critically Ill Surgical Patients

Regina Frontera1 Mirko Barone2 Massimo Ippoliti2
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1 Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, SS. Annunziata University Hospital of Chieti, G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti, Italy
2 Department of General and Thoracic Surgery, SS. Annunziata University Hospital of Chieti, Italy
EJMO 2022, 6(3), 268–270; https://doi.org/10.14744/ejmo.2022.47068
Submitted: 12 July 2022 | Accepted: 1 August 2022 | Published: 16 October 2022
© 2022 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Faced with the complexity of emergency surgery and the aging of the population, it is increasingly common to have to deal with critically ill patients who require intensive care postoperatively. Surgical stress amplifies senescence mechanisms where the organism is called to face the establishment of both early and late pathophysiological mechanisms disrupting homeostasis.
In this scenario, sarcopenia represents a prognostic factor with a multifactorial etiology that can lead to fearful complications in the early postoperative period. As an octogenarian adaptation, its multifactorial genesis allows to act and counterbalance the action of concomitant modifiable factors through post-operative optimization strategies.

Keywords
Sarcopenia
obesity paradox
emergency surgery
ICU
Conflict of interest
None declared.
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Eurasian Journal of Medicine and Oncology, Electronic ISSN: 2587-196X Print ISSN: 2587-2400, Published by AccScience Publishing