Nutrition in Patient With Critical Limb Ischemia (NutriVasc)

December 25, 2025 updated by: Boston Medical Center

Perioperative Nutritional Optimization in Patients With Critical Limb Ischemia

A prospective pilot study examining nutritional supplements among vascular surgery patients with Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI). CLI patients have a high rate of malnutrition and has the potential to benefit greatly from nutritional intervention. The investigators plan to evaluate nutrition and functional status of patients by assessing objective lab values and the use of the hand grip strength test. Providing perioperative nutritional supplements to patients has potentially improved their nutritional status, which in turn may improve the patient's clinical status after surgery.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Malnutrition continues to be a considerable public health issue in the United States and is known to be associated with negative health outcomes. Surgeons and hospitals have adopted preoperative nutritional screening and perioperative nutritional supplementation as best practice for modern treatment of general surgery patients. Nutritional optimization has been shown to improve outcomes in these patients and has become integrated as a key component of the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocol. Although much progress has been made towards optimizing perioperative nutritional status for general surgery patients in an effort to improve surgical outcomes, there remains a dearth of information on the association between nutritional status and health outcomes after vascular surgery interventions. Recent research has found that up to 50% of general and gastrointestinal surgical patients suffered from malnutrition in the preoperative phase. This finding has led to efforts to optimize the nutritional status of general and gastrointestinal surgery patients in the perioperative phase. Perioperative nutritional supplementation has been shown to reduce morbidity and mortality in various subsets of surgical patients. This research has fallen short of examining nutritional status and outcomes among vascular surgery patients. Published data in this area has been limited to analyses of existing retrospective datasets. Additionally, nutritional research that includes data from vascular surgery patients has been limited to an examination of pre- and post-operative albumin levels in an attempt to find a correlation between these levels and outcomes. Though this research is limited, it has shown that vascular surgery patients with low (<3.5 g/dl) pre-operative albumin levels and critical limb ischemia (CLI) are at increased risk for perioperative morbidity and mortality after lower extremity bypass than vascular surgery patients with high pre-operative albumin levels (>3.5 g/dl). As serum albumin levels can be altered in the acute phase due to inflammation, this research, while valuable, only represents a single component required for the assessment of nutritional status.

Approximately 45.5% patients with CLI have been shown to have signs of preoperative malnutrition when undergoing infrainguinal bypass. Malnutrition remains an underrepresented area of perioperative management for vascular surgery patients. Research on the association between nutritional supplementation and improved vascular surgery outcomes has the potential to enhance the success of lower extremity interventions by validating an optimal adjunctive medical therapy. Patients with CLI in general are at significantly higher risk for perioperative morbidity and resource utilization when compared to other hospitalized patients. Unlike many gastrointestinal surgery patients, these patients often do not have a primary gastrointestinal pathology contributing to their malnutrition; more likely, it may be the result of their comorbidities and an overall failure to thrive. Perioperative nutritional supplementation has the potential to improve the nutritional status of these patients and ultimately improve outcomes. Yet, to date, no prospective trial of nutritional supplementation in CLI patients has been performed.

A multidisciplinary team including nutritionists, vascular surgeons, and surgical critical care surgeons with expertise in perioperative nutrition research has been assembled to conduct a pilot research study examining the impact of nutritional supplementation on vascular surgery outcomes.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

30

Phase

  • Early Phase 1

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Massachusetts
      • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02118
        • Recruiting
        • Boston Medical Center
        • Contact:
        • Contact:

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years to 99 years (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Critical Limb Ischemia

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Female patients who are pregnant or lactating
  • Chronic Kidney Disease Stages 4 and 5
  • Patients who are on dialysis

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Nutritional Supplement
Administration of Ensure Surgery Immunonutrition Shake and ensure Enlive Advanced Nutrition Shake.
Drug: Ensure Surgery Immunonutrition Shake
An FDA approved nutritional supplement. Prepackaged product designed to be administered one week prior to and one week post surgical procedures.
Drug: Ensure Enlive Advanced Nutrition Shake
An FDA approved nutritional supplement. Prepackaged product designed to be administered 2 weeks prior to and 2 weeks post surgical procedure for a period of one week. .

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in serum albumin levels
Time Frame: baseline and 30 days
Albumin is a carbohydrate-free protein, which constitutes 55% to 65% of total plasma protein. Albumin results can reflect the nutritional status of the body and other problems with the kidney or liver. A normal albumin range is 3.4 to 5.4 g/dL. Albumin levels will be tested on blood samples on each participant obtained at baseline and 30 days after nutritional supplementation. Lower albumin levels are associated with malnutrition
baseline and 30 days
Change in prealbumin levels
Time Frame: baseline and 30 days
Prealbumin is a protein produced by the liver and levels can reflect nutritional status. Normal results for a prealbumin blood test for adults are 15 to 36 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). Prealbumin levels will be tested on blood samples on each participant obtained at baseline and 30 days after nutritional supplementation. Lower levels of prealbumin are associated with malnutrition.
baseline and 30 days
Change in transferrin levels
Time Frame: baseline and 30 days
Transferrin is the main protein in the blood that binds to iron and transports it throughout the body. The normal range for transferrin is 170 to 370 mg/dl. Transferrin levels will be tested on blood samples on each participant obtained at baseline and 30 days after nutritional supplementation. Transferrin levels rise with iron deficiency and fall in cases of iron overload.
baseline and 30 days
Change in C-reactive protein levels
Time Frame: baseline and 30 days
C-reactive protein (CRP) is a substance produced by the liver that increases in the presence of inflammation in the body. C-reactive protein levels will be tested on blood samples on each participant obtained at baseline and 30 days after nutritional supplementation. Lower levels are favorable.
baseline and 30 days

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in Hand grip strength
Time Frame: baseline and 30 days
A hand dynamometer will be used to measure hand grip strength. Higher values are favorable.
baseline and 30 days

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change in ERAS (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery) Malnutrition Screening Test (MST) Scores
Time Frame: baseline and 30 days
The ERAS Malnutrition Screening Test (MST) is a 3 question survey used to evaluate patient's nutritional status. The 3 questions ask about recent weight loss without trying, amount of the weight loss, and whether eating poorly because of a decreased appetite. Scores of 2 or greater indicate risk of malnutrition. Lower scores are favorable.
baseline and 30 days

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Boston Medical Center

Collaborators

Abbott
Vascular & Endovascular Surgery Society

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Jeffrey J Siracuse, MD, Boston Medical Center

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

October 2, 2018

Primary Completion (Estimated)

June 1, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

June 1, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 13, 2018

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 7, 2018

First Posted (Actual)

May 18, 2018

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

December 31, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 25, 2025

Last Verified

December 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • H-37324

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

Yes

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

Yes

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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