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Purpose: The purpose of this study, is the evaluation of nutritional status and body composition changes in heart patients before and after cardiac surgery. Method: The study was based on a sample of 59 patients at the cardiac surgery clinic of AHEPA University General Hospital, who were adult men and women, that would be undergoing by-pass and heart valve surgery within a few days, due to coronary heart disease and valvular disease respectively. The patients went through anthropometric measurements, body composition analysis and were asked to answer to the questionnaires of Nutritional Screening Tools. The bibliographic research for the theoretical part was done through the search engines Scopus and PubMed to find scientific review articles of the last decade, as well as from scientific books. The statistical analysis was done on SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions) and Microsoft Office Excel 2010. Results: A statistically significant change was observed in several somatometric parameters, mainly weight, fat mass, water concentration, phase angle and control force, in a 95% confidence interval and a significance level of 5% (α = 0.05). Conclusion: It is obvious that a heart surgery has a great impact on the body and the somatometric parameters. Men appear to be more prone to cardiovascular disease than women. Postoperatively, they lost more weight and fat, more water retention, but women also seemed to be weak and vulnerable. Age, the presence of obesity and malnutrition, certainly have an important role in the clinical outcome, the duration of hospitalization in and out of the ICU and the speed of recovery certainly.