The Role of Oral Nutritional Supplements in Cancer Patients

Cancers are a large family of diseases that involve abnormal cell growth with the potential toinvade or spread to other parts of the body. Malnutrition in cancer patients occurs when youare eating less energy and protein than the amount your body needs. Disease-relatedmalnutrition is a common problem in individuals with cancers. Malnutrition leads tounplanned weight loss, reduced in body fat and muscle, reduced response to cancertreatments and increased side effects and it has negatively influencing health status.Therefore, the patients nutritional status is very important for optimizing outcomes in cancerpatients. The objective of this study was to review of the literature regarding the effects of oralnutritional supplements (ONS) in the improvement of cancer patients. To that end, weperformed a bibliographic search of national and international scientific articles publishedwithin the past 10 years and indexed for PubMed, Scopus, SID and Google scholardatabases. ONS are typically used in addition to the normal diet, when diet alone isinsufficient to meet daily nutritional requirements. ONS improves the patients nutritionalstatus by increasing energy intake and physical activity, preserving of lean body mass (LBM)and increasing appetite and weight gain, which can relieve the patients symptoms and delaythe disease progression. Several studies have showed ONS may be associated withreduced LOS, hospitalization cost, risk of infection and improved some aspects of QOL(quality of life) in patients with cancer. Findings show that using ONS leads to improvementof nutritional status and cancer patients’ outcome. Therefore, use of ONS along withpatients training and regular nutritional consultation will be helpful in Patient satisfaction andimprovement of QOL.

کلیدواژه ها:

Oral Nutritional Supplement ، Cancer ، Patient ، Malnutrition ، Lean Body Mass