Objective: Investigating incidence of nutritional risk and nutrition support in gastrointestinal cancer patients to provide reference for improving the clinical nutritional application level.Method: We evaluated the nutritional risk of gastrointestinal cancer patients who were newly admitted from September 2015 to February 2016 by Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002).Results: Totally, 201 cases completed assessment by NRS 2002, and 69 cases (34.3%) were at nutritional risk. The incidence of nutritional risk was higher in patients with ≥65 (P < 0.05), with tumor size ≥ 5 cm (P < 0.05) or well-differentiated (P < 0.001). Incidence of nutritional risk in patients with BMI < 18.5 was higher than patients with BMI 18.5-25 and ≥25 (P < 0.05). Patients with nutrition risk had greater rate of anemia than with no risk. In nutritional risk group, 54 cases underwent enteral nutrition support, and their hospitalization stay was shorter, and the rates of complications were smaller (P < 0.05). Further multivariate logistic regression analysis showed NRS 2002 score, middle differentiation degree and III/I were the risk factors for postoperative complication.Conclusion: Preoperative NRS 2002 score was proved to be a predictive index for postoperative complication rate, and this indicates that patients with a high preoperative NRS 2002 score are at higher risk of developing postoperative complications and longer recovery period.