Zhandong Li, Ye Feng, Yun Lei, Pingping Li
Objective:
To investigate the incidence of nutritional risk in in-patients with advanced cancer and the relationship between nutritional risk and life quality and prognosis.
Methods:
From May 2011 to October 2011, we enrolled 88 hospitalized patients with advanced cancer in the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Peking University School of Oncology. The nutritional risk was assessed according to the Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 questionnaire which scores the risk from 0 to 7.
Results:
On the 88 screened patients, a nutritional risk score ≥3 was observed in 47.7% of patients. The nutritional risk was higher in elderly patients (56.8%) and the patients with digestive system tumor, especially, with esophageal carcinoma (100%), pancreatic carcinoma (100%), gastric carcinoma (66.7%) or ampullary carcinoma (66.7%). The rate of a score of ECOG >2 are 21.4% and 4.5% respectively in the patients with nutritional risk and no nutritional risk, and the average hospitalization days were 29 and 21 days. The most common gastrointestinal symptoms in advanced cancer patients with nutritional risk were anorexia (64.3%), nausea and vomiting (21.4%).
Conclusions:
Nutritional risk is frequent in hospitalized patients with advanced cancer, especially, in elderly patients and the patients with digestive system tumor. The patients with nutritional risk have a worse performance status and a longer hospitalization time. Nutritional therapies for patients with advanced gastric cancer should be accordant with the guidelines of ESPEN and CENTO. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), especially, oral herbs has good benefit on advanced gastric cancer patients with anorexia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms. The literature has been reported about the effect and mechanism of intravenous proprietary Chinese medicine to treat cancer cachexia.
