Nutritional status in cancer patients in iran

Cancer patients are at risk of nutritional problems all around the world. Malnutrition leads to increased morbidity, side effects such as infection, length of hospital stay, disease burden and costs, Days offfrom work and decreased quality of life, response to treatment and survival. Finally, malnutrition leads to cachexia, a complicated syndrome with no exact management which is responsible for 20% ofcancer mortality. Thus, nutritional assessment and early intervention is of essential importance in cancer patients. There are few studies concerned about nutritional assessment in cancer patients inIran. This article discusses about nutritional status of cancer patients in Iran.We searched for related articles considering nutritional assessment and nutritional status of cancer patients- inpatients oroutpatients- in electronic databases such as PubMed. There are different ways for assessing nutritional status of patients including risk assessment tools in which PG-SGA is the most complete tool due toclinical symptom monitoring. There are few studies which applied this tool. Majority of studies only evaluated weight loss and BMI to evaluate nutritional status of cancer patients. Almost all studies reported that more than half of patients are at risk of malnutrition. Tumor cite is one of the significant effective factors in which gastrointestinal cancer and leukemia are at the top and least nutritional risk is observed in breast cancer. Treatment procedures also affect nutritional status; in which up to 98% risk of malnutrition were seen in GI cancer patients after surgery. Chemotherapy also, deteriorates the nutritional status and dietary intake of patients with cancer. Age, living solitude and rural or urban living were effective on nutritional status of cancer patients in some studies, as well. Malnutrition is prevalent in patients with cancer in Iran; therefore early, programmed and repeated nutritional screening and assessment and the sooner nutritional intervention is crucial in cancer patients

کلیدواژه ها:

Lifestyle and Cancer ، Nutrition and Cancer ، Cancer Treatment and Management ، Chemotherapy ، Radio-Oncology