Objective To explore the predictive value of the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) malnutrition diagnostic criteria in assessing the short-term prognosis of patients with advanced gastric cancer undergoing minimal incision radical gastrectomy.

Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on the data of 309 gastric cancer patients who underwent laparoscopic gastrectomy. Patients were categorized into malnourished (n = 107) and non-malnourished groups (n = 202) based on the GLIM criteria. The association between nutritional status and overall survival (OS) was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox model. Additionally, a nomogram was constructed, incorporating independent clinical prognostic variables. The accuracy of the nomogram in predicting 1, 2, and 3 years OS was determined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.

Results Compared to non-malnourished patients, malnourished patients were older, more likely to be female, had a higher proportion of M1 stage, a higher proportion of ECOG ＞ 1, a higher proportion of high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and a lower proportion of abnormal hemoglobin levels (P ＜ 0.05). The OS of malnourished patients was worse than that of non-malnourished patients (P ＜ 0.05). Multivariate analysis revealed that malnutrition as defined by GLIM, M stage, albumin, NLR, and ECOG performance status were independent prognostic factors for poor OS in gastric cancer patients. The constructed nomogram yielded area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.80, 0.72, and 0.78 for predicting mortality at 1, 2, and 3 years after admission in malnourished gastric cancer patients, respectively.

Conclusions The GLIM criteria not only diagnose malnutrition in gastric cancer patients but also predict their short-term overall survival rate.