Struggling with nutrition in patients with advanced cancer: nutrition and nourishment-focusing on metabolism and supportive care

Abstract

Patients with advanced cancer are at high risk of losing vital body resources resulting in malnutrition, immunodeficiency, impaired quality of life and worse clinical outcome. Prominent among the diverse factors contributing to this complex condition are metabolic derangements characterized by systemic inflammation, catabolism and accumulating changes in body composition. Because cure in advanced cancer still remains elusive, optimal supportive and integrated palliative care are required to allow patients to tolerate aggressive or long-term anticancer treatments, to maintain an adequate quality of life or to stay the course of advancing disease. Support needs to address and focus on all physical, psychological and social problems interfering with food intake, digestion and anabolism to maintaining adequate body resources and functions. Reliable screening for malnutrition, adequate assessment of the nutritional and metabolic status, and individualized multimodal care require the establishment of dedicated operating procedures involving experts and standardized pathways for communication among all participants involved in clinical cancer care. Therapeutic options include counseling, enriching foods, oral nutritional supplements, enteral and parenteral nutrition, metabolic modulation, exercise training, supportive care to enable and improve the intake of adequate amounts of food, as well as psycho-oncology and social support. Finally, to enable this new level of nutritional and metabolic patient care it appears necessary to establish common definitions and grading systems allowing not only for efficient treatment but allocating adequate medical resources to reach this goal.

Keywords: advanced cancer; malnutrition; multimodal care; muscle mass; supportive care; systemic inflammation.