Nutritional Assessment of Cancer Patients in Tehran, Iran

Background and objectives: Weight loss and malnutrition are commonamong cancer patients, these two factors greatly affecting survival andquality of life during treatment. Since cancer is becomingincreasinglycommon in the world and in order to provide better treatmentmeasures, it is important to identify and prevent side effects. The present studyhas been conducted in 2010 on a sample of cancer patients in the oncologycenter of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences to determine theprevalence rates of malnutrition and the factors affecting it.Methods: The PG-SGA standard questionnaire was administered to 416cancer patients to evaluate their nutrition status and determine the frequencyof each malnutrition stage. Correlations and ANOVA tests were used toanalyze the relationship between factors and weight loss and how they mightaffect the development of malnutrition.Results: The prevalence of malnutrition among the patients was 53.1% out ofwhich 29.1% had moderate and 24% had severe malnutrition. The mostcommon factors inducing nutritional symptoms were depression andanorexia. Some 35 % of the patients had over 5% weight loss in the lastmouth. The average PG-SGA score was 10.1 with 49 being the highest. 46.1percent of the patients scored over 9 (requiring critical nutrient intervention).Malnutrition has a high correlation with weight loss, activity limitations,nutritional symptoms, and cancer stage, but low correlation with treatment andpathologic type.Conclusion: Malnutrition has a high prevalence in Iranian cancer patientsand has a close relationship with mortality, morbidity and treatment-relatedproblems and also quality of life. Therefore, periodical assessment by PGSGAto detect malnutrition in patients should be made so that appropriatenutritional interventions can be provided.