Organ Transplant: Nutrition Tips Before And After

Preparing for transplant – special diet needs

Eat well for recovery

Cultivate healthy eating habits

A healthy and balanced diet is important to maintain overall health after transplant.

Transplant is a gift of life – donated generously by an individual, and received by another. Nutrition plays a crucial role in the health care plan of transplant patients as studies have shown that patients who are better nourished, recover better and more quickly from transplant surgery.

Before a transplant, it is essential for the recipients to maintain optimal health status, said Ms Tan Sheau Kang, Dietitian, Department of Dietetics, Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a member of the SingHealth group. Any malnourishment, underweight or obese may run the risk of infections and difficulty in surgical wound healing after transplant. Obese patients may be at higher risks of developing heart disease and diabetes.

Below are the dietary needs at different stages of the transplant.

Preparing for transplant – special diet needs

One of the first things that dietitians do for patients at this stage is to accurately assess their nutritional status using various tools, such as the body mass index, dietary recall, blood test results, the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), and the dynamometer. The SGA tracks changes in weight and diet, gastrointestinal symptoms, functional capacity and metabolic demand. The dynamometer measures grip strength.

Advanced liver disease patients tend to suffer from ascites, or fluid retention in the abdomen, so they may look overweight. In reality, they may be malnourished so they usually need a higher energy and protein diet.

Kidney failure patients are likely to have undergone a long period of dialysis. They would have been put on a restricted diet to maintain the levels of electrolytes and fluids in the body, and are likely to have poor appetite.

Renal patients on dialysis need a high-protein diet to replenish the protein lost during dialysis, while non-dialysis patients may need an adjustment in their diet to minimise protein waste build-up in the blood.

Eat well for recovery

Post-surgery patients need to eat well after surgery to boost their recovery. Dietitians usually prescribe a high-protein and high calorie meal to boost their nutritional status, and to aid recovery.

Post-surgery patients will be on several immunosuppressant drugs, and they will have a lower immune system than the general population. Dietitians will educate the patients on the practice of good food hygiene to minimise the incidence of food-borne illnesses.

During this period of about three months, the patient's nutritional status is monitored very closely as he is in hospital immediately post-transplant, and after discharge, he will be returning to see the transplant team every week or fortnightly.

Cultivate healthy eating habits

When the transplant patient's condition is stable, he is reviewed less frequently. As with other aspects of long-term care, he will learn about healthy eating habits and a healthy lifestyle to prevent and manage nutrition-related side effects from immunosuppressant drugs. Immunosuppressant drugs increase the risk of foodborne illnesses, and conditions such as weight gain, diabetes, high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Ref. Q15

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