Abstract

JOAQUIN ORTIZ, Clara. Analysis of clinical guidelines in Oncology. Nutr. Hosp. [online]. 2016, vol.33, suppl.1, pp.40-49. ISSN 1699-5198.

At present there is a wide variability in clinical practice regarding nutritional support that could affect the nutritional status of cancer patients. The implementation of clinical practice guidelines of appropriate quality can help us to reduce this variability and minimize the deleterious effects of malnutrition in cancer patients. Guidelines are usually based on evidence and make recommendations based on the best information available. However, it is important to consider the methodological quality in the development of guidelines and assess whether there are conflicts of interest. The main problems of the current guidelines are that often there is limited evidence of high quality, and that recommendations based solely on the evidence may not be useful in clinical practice, as they do not take into account the applicability that is essential for its implementation. On the other hand, till the date, clinical guidelines have been inconsistent in how to assess the quality of evidence and grade of recommendation. As a result, guideline users face challenges in understanding the messages that grading systems try to communicate. This review provides a summary of recommendations of the main clinical guidelines on nutritional support in cancer patients developed in the last 10 years, including some good quality guidelines of scientific societies that are not accessible through the commonly used databases such PubMed.

Keywords : Oncology; Cancer; Guideline; Nutritional support; Malnutrition.

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