Detection of malnutrition prevalence among adult cancer patients

Malnutrition is a common complication seen among cancer patients. It may affect cancer treatment negatively. To detect malnutrition at an early level is important for the prognosis of the disease. Malnutrition screening is essential at diagnosis level to be able to protect patiens from malnutrition. If nutritional screening is skipped, malnutrition could not be overcome. In this study we aimed to detect malnutrition prevalence among adult cancer patients. The study was conducted at Acibadem Kozyatagi Hospital with 59 patients. Nutritional screening and assessment and measurements were applied in 48 hour after the patient was claimed to hospital. We used two tools for detecting malnutrition which are Nutritional Risk Screening-2002 (NRS-2002) and Subjective Global Assessment (SGA). We also took anthropometric measurements from patients which are body mass index (BMI), triceps skinfold thickness (TST) , and mid upper arm circumference (MUAC). Another aim of us was to look at the concordance between NRS-2002 and SGA, and concordance of those with anthropometric measurements. Both NRS-2002 and SGA found the same rate of malnutrition among those patients which is 41%. There was a good concordance between NRS-2002 and SGA (p: 0.02, p<0.05). We could not find a significant relationship between those tools and anthropometry. Key words: malnutrition, cancer, NRS-2002, SGA, anthropometry