Paper
Sunday, November 4, 2007
247
Evaluation of the Nutritional Status in Hospitalized Cancer Patients in Taiwan
Yeur-Hur Lai, PhD, School of Nursing, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan and Wei-Lien Feng, MSN, Taiwan Cooperative Oncology Group, Division of Cancer Research, National Health Research Institute, Taipei, Taiwan.
| Learning Objective #1: To learn the nutritional status of hospitalized advanced cancer patients in Taiwan |
| Learning Objective #2: To identify factors related to advanced cancer patients' nutritional status. |
Research Purposes. (1) To examine the nutritional status of hospitalized advanced cancer patients in Taiwan, and (2) to examine factors related to the nutritional status. Background. Malnutrition is prevalent in advanced cancer patients, but limited investigations have addressed this issue in Taiwan. Method. This is a cross-sectional correlational study. Results. A total of 151 advanced cancer patients were recruited from three inpatient wards in a university affiliated hospital in Taipei. Patients’ nutritional status, symptom, performance status, and dietary intake were assessed by the Mini-Nutritional Assessment Chinese version (MNA-C), Symptom Severity Scale, Karnofsky’s Performance Scale, and 3-day dietary record, respectively. All 151 subjects completed the MNA-C. One of every five patients was also assessed for their 3-day dietary content records. There were 30 patients completed the 3-day dietary record. Data from the 30 subjects’ reports suggested that advanced cancer patients had low overall caloric intakes, particularly fat intake. From the MNA-C cutoff points, 91.4% of subjects were either malnourished or at risk for malnutrition. The results of multiple regression showed that symptom severity, body mass index, performance status, hemoglobin level, and diagnoses of gastrointestinal cancers and head and neck cancers were factors significantly predicting nutritional status. Conclusions. Generally, most of the advanced hospitalized Taiwanese cancer patients had variety range of malnutrition problem. This problem needs to be further examined for possible barriers and effective interventions.