Task: Question Answering
Input (English): Context: To investigate the influence of clinical characteristics including nutritional markers on postoperative survival in patients undergoing total gastrectomy (TG) for gastric cancer (GC).', 'One hundred fifty-four patients were enrolled. Uni- and multivariate analyses using the Cox proportional hazard model were performed to explore the most valuable clinical characteristic that was associated with postoperative survival.', 'Multivariate analysis using twelve clinical characteristics selected from univariate analyses revealed that age (≤ 72/>72), carcinoembryonic antigen (≤ 20/>20) (ng/ml), white blood cell count (≤ 9.5/>9.5) (× 10(3)/mm(3)), prognostic nutritional index (PNI) (≤ 45/>45) and lymph node metastasis (negative/positive) were associated with postoperative survival. Kaplan-Meier analysis and log-rank test showed that patients with higher PNI (>45) had a higher postoperative survival rate than those with lower PNI (≤ 45) (p<0.001).\Question: Is prognostic nutritional index associated with survival after total gastrectomy for patients with gastric cancer?
Output (English): PNI is associated with postoperative survival of patients undergoing TG for GC and is able to divide such patients into two independent groups before surgery.