Prealbumin as a New Marker for Assessment of the Nutritional Status in Patients with Gynecological Malignancies

Abstract

Gynecological malignancies contribute to 10–15% of cancers in women. Malnutrition is a common problem in cancer patients and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. As a result, it is important to assess every cancer patient’s nutritional status using one or more of the methods that are developed for this purpose. Prealbumin (PAB) is a potential useful marker because its serum concentrations are closely related to early changes in nutritional status. To determine the role of PAB in assessment of malnutrition in gynecological cancer patients and to detect the relationship between its serum level and occurrence of treatment-related side effects. We studied malnutrition prevalence and PAB serum concentrations in 100 gynecological cancer patients. The scored patient-generated subjective global assessment (PG-SGA) was used as the reference method to determine malnutrition. Patients were followed up for development of complications after treatment. According to the PG-SGA reference method, 53% of patients were classified as well nourished and 47% as malnourished (40% moderate malnutrition and 7% severe malnutrition). PAB showed good correlation with the nutritional status assessed by the PG-SGA with good sensitivity (91.49%). We conclude that PAB could represent a feasible and reliable tool in the evaluation of malnutrition in gynecological cancer patients, especially in settings where it is difficult to obtain a more detailed and comprehensive nutritional assessment.