291P - Assessment of nutritional status in cancer patients using patient generated subjective global assessment screening tool

Background

Malnutrition is one of the most frequent disorders in cancer patients which accounts for 50-90%. This high prevalence of malnutrition is very concerning as it is associated with reduced treatment efficacy, functional status, quality of life and survival. The prevalence of malnutrition varies with tumor type, site and the stage of the disease. The highest prevalence of cancer patients with nutritional deficits is seen in those with tumors of the gastrointestinal tract and lung.

Methods

It is a hospital based cross sectional study among 95 cancer patients. They were screened using Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PGSGA) for malnutrition. Median and IQR were used to describe the continuous data and frequency and percentage for the categorical variables. To identify the correlation between continuous variables, Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used. At 95% confidence interval, p value less than 0.05 was termed as statistically significant. The data were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 software.

Results

Among 95 patients, 36.85% of patients were GI cancers followed by 27.37% lung cancer, breast cancer (10.53%) and rectal cancer (10.53%). Most of the patients (81.05%) were well nourished Subjective Global Assessment (SGA-A), 13.68% patients were moderately malnourished or had suspected malnutrition (SGA-B) and 5.26% patients were severely malnourished (SGA-C). There was statistically significant difference in association of malnutrition with gastrointestinal cancer. Among equally distributed limited and metastatic cancers, there was no significant association between stages of cancer with malnutrition.

Conclusions

Nutritional assessment and support should be an integral part of care in gastrointestinal cancer.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The author.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

The author has declared no conflicts of interest.