Objectives: Malnutrition is a prevalent condition in cancer patients that significantly impacts patients' clinical outcomes and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL). The outcome was to characterize the nutritional status by describing the prevalence of malnutrition (mild, moderate, or severe) and its risk in outpatient cancer patients.
Methods: Multicenter, prospective, cross-sectional, descriptive, two-cohort study conducted on consecutive adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors (stages III-IV). The study was conducted in 10 Spanish hospitals distributed all over the Spanish geography, with a recruitment period of 5 months (between April and September 2020). Study patients were divided into two groups according to their cancer therapy: group A, patients who underwent immunotherapy, and group B, patients who received combined therapy (immunotherapy plus chemotherapy and radiotherapy).
Results: A total of 585 patients were included. The proportion of patients at risk of malnutrition was notably more significant in the combination group (chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy) than in the immunotherapy-only group (28.3% versus 58.5%, respectively, P < .0001). According to this evaluation the highest proportion of patients at risk were those with pancreatic cancer (51 patients; 89.5%), followed by large intestine cancer (52 patients; 55.3%) and lung cancer (56 patients; 29.3%), P < .0001.
Conclusions: Patients treated with only immunotherapy seemed to have better nutritional status, which indicated health-related quality of life improvement. Additionally, there was a trend associating nutritional status with tumor location. Treatment strategy, treatment duration, performance status, and treatment location were independently associated with malnutrition.
Implications for nursing practice: Integrating nutritional assessment into routine clinical practice will improve the quality of life of oncology patients. An integrative approach to health improves overall results in terms of nutritional status and improved quality of life and shows that daily living activities are more satisfactory for patients with nursing interventions. Nursing interventions are consistent with an educational approach to patients as long as the interventions described in international guidelines are detailed in the framework of the patient care.
Keywords: Cancer; Chemotherapy; Immunotherapy; Malnutrition; Nutritional status; Radiotherapy.
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