Abstract

FERNANDEZ LOPEZ, María Teresa et al. Malnutrition in patients with cancer: four years experience. Nutr. Hosp. [online]. 2013, vol.28, n.2, pp.372-381. ISSN 1699-5198.  https://dx.doi.org/10.3305/nh.2013.28.2.6239.

Objective: To analyze the prevalence and degree of malnutrition among patients with cancer who were sent to an Oncological Nutrition visit. Material and methods: It's an observational cross-sectional descriptive study. First nutrition visit data of all patientes aged > 18 with cancer who were evaluated from march of 2008 to february of 2012 were used. A total of 997 patients were studied using the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment. Results: 69% of the patients had lost more than 5% of their usual weight within the previous 3 months, the patients with the highest frequency of weight loss were those with digestive cancer. Eating problems were encountered by the 81.2% of the patients, the most frequent problem being anorexia (53.3%) and the median number of symptoms was 3. Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment shows a malnutrition prevalence of 72.9% (29.9% with moderate malnutrition and 43% with severe malnutrition). Malnutrition was related to the type of cancer and the stage of the disease and wasn't related to age, gender neither usual body mass index. Conclusions: Malnutrition prevalence among patients who were evaluated in our consulting-room is high. Nutritional evaluation is very important to detect patients at risk of malnutrition or with malnutrition and helps to choose the nutritional treatment.

Keywords : Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment; Cancer; Malnutrition; Prevalence.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )