![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
Purpose: The consequences of malnutrition include increased risk of many complications. The assessment and management of nutritional problems are essential in supportive care of patients undergoing therapy. The primary objective of the present study was to assess changes in the nutritional status in lung cancer patients who had undergone chemotherapy.
Patients and methods: Preliminary and post-chemotherapy assessments of patients’ nutritional status and medical characteristics were conducted using the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) from July 2014 to May 2016 at Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital. Four hundred sixty-five advanced lung cancer patients (51.8% men and 48.2% women with a mean (SD) age of 60.2 ± 9.8 years) participated in the present study. PG-SGA was assessed prior to the initiation of chemotherapy and after four cycles of chemotherapy.
Results: We found that 11.4% of the patients were severely malnourished and 65.6% of the patients were moderately malnourished prior to chemotherapy. After chemotherapy, 52.9% of the patients were considered moderately malnourished, whereas 33.8% were severely malnourished. The nutritional status had deteriorated in the majority of patients. After chemotherapy, there was a rise in the prevalence of nutrition impact symptoms.
Conclusions: A deteriorated nutritional status was the result of the side effects caused by chemotherapy in the patients of the present study. These findings highlight that more attention should be paid to improve the nutritional status in patients with advanced lung cancer undergoing chemotherapy, and proper nutrition education and nutritional support should be provided to these patients.
Acknowledgments
We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
Ethical statement
This study was approved by the Harbin Medical University Ethics Committee.
Disclosure statement
We declare that we have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Funding
This project was supported by Heilongjiang Province Postdoctoral Foundation (LBH-Z17131) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M631953).
Author contributions
All authors contributed to data analysis and drafting and revising the article; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.