Rationale and indications for preoperative feeding of malnourished surgical cancer patients

Abstract

involving 3047 patients with 11 different tumor types 3 found that patients with favorable subtypes of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, breast cancer, acute non-lymphocytic leukemia, and sarcomas had the lowest prevalence of weight loss (31% to 41%), whereas patients with unfavorable non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, colon cancer, prostate cancer, and lung cancer had a 48% to 61% prevalence of weight loss. Patients with pancreatic or gastric cancer had the highest prevalence of weight loss (83% to 87%). Several studies have reported that patients with upper gastrointestinal malignancy and especially cancer of the esophagus are frequently affected by malnutrition, 11,18 ‐21 whereas 43% to 61% of patients with lung cancer have weight loss, depending on the stage of the disease. 22 In the ECOG study, 3 a positive relation was also demonstrated between these types of cancer and the prevalence and severity of weight loss.