[Nutritional support in laryngectomized patients]

Abstract

Pathologies involving tumours of the neck are an important group of neoplasias. The tumours themselves are often the cause of malnutrition, and this may be aggravated in these patients by other factors such as: excess of alcohol and cigarettes, anatomical location of the tumour next to the digestive tract and the application of cyto-reducing treatment applied previously. The main purpose of the present study is to analyze the possible effect of hospital diets during the postoperative period in laryngectomized patients, on the development of malnutrition. For this purpose 49 patients were studied, all diagnosed consecutively during the last year as suffering from epidermoid carcinoma of the larynx, subjected to 24 total laryngectomies, 4 partial laryngectomies and 21 supraglottic laryngectomies. A conventional diet was administered at random to 21 patients, and a commercial enteral diet to the remaining 28. The most important conclusions were as follows: a) high incidence of harmful habits, b) positive nutritional state of the patients upon admittance, c) high incidence of malnutrition one week after the operation, which was maintained virtually in the same proportion to the time spent in hospital, d) the lack of influence of the nutritional state by type of diet administered, e) the possible influence on malnutrition by type of surgery performed, location of the tumour (pyriform sinus) and high incidence of complications usually developed.