Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy: Prior Nutritional Assessment

Abstract

Introduction: The incidence of malnutrition in cancer ranges from 40 to 80%. Their negative effects include increased toxicity to anticancer therapy, postoperative complications with worsening of clinical conditions and may interrupt the treatment. Objective: to determine the prevalence of malnutrition among patients initiating chemotherapy and associate it to primary tumor site and disease staging. Method: This was a cross-sectional and quantitative research. Data were collected from the nutritional assessment carried out by the Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment and consultation of medical records on the first day of chemotherapy. Results: Most of the 83 individuals were female (57.4%) and were above 50 years old (75.9%). Gastrointestinal neoplasms were the most prevalent (34.9%). The majority of patients were in stage s III or IV of disease (66.3%) and palliative chemotherapy were the proposed treatment for 42.7% of them. Malnutrition affected 48% of individuals, and it was associated to decreased food intake or by enteral feeding, weight loss, poor clinical condition on physical examination, changes in functional capacity and symptoms such as anorexia and pain (p<0.001). The probability of patients with gastrointestinal neoplasms to present malnutrition was three times higher when compared to other primary sites of cancer (p=0.0012). Conclusion: Malnutrition was identified in approximately half of the patients and was associated with cancers of the gastrointestinal tract and stages III and IV; however, it was not associated with previous surgical procedure.