Madrid, España
The inability to sustain an appropriate nutritional status is a common problem in oncology patients. Both the neoplastic disease and its treatment lead to severe protein-caloric malnutrition which has prognostic significance. In this article, we review the pathophysiology of cancer cachexia and the local, systemic and secondary effects, such as the nutrition-associated complications of patients undergoing antitumor therapy. Despite the controversy surrounding the final benefit of pharmacologic management and nutritional support of anorexia/caquexia, we evaluate the potential methods and we conclude that the nutritional assessment should be part of cancer treatment in order to improve the outcome and to limit the complications. We have a simple, sensitive and specific method to evaluate it: The Subjective Global Assessment of nutritional status.
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