ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate prospectively the nutritional risks,undernutrition,and nutritional support in hospitalized patients with later but non-end-stage malignancies in a second grade hospital in Beijing.Methods All patients who were admitted in the department of oncology in this hospital from October 2011 to April 2013 were consecutively recorded.Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS 2002) was used for screening nutrition risks,the undernutrition assessment was performed on the first morning for patients meet the inclusion criteria,and nutritional support was evaluated until the discharge.For patients with no nutritional risk,NRS 2002 was repeated weekly during the hospitalization.Results A total of 305 cases of inpatients admitted,and 224cases meeting the inclusion criteria were screened by NRS 2002,among whom only 171 patients with non-endstage later stage cancer entered the final analysis.Among these 171 patients,116 (67.8％) were at nutritional risks.Furthermore,for different types of tumor,the nutritional risk was 45.7％ for lung cancer,89.4％ for digestive-tract cancers,81.3％ for liver-biliary and pancreatic cancers,and 83.3％ for head-and-neck cancers.The undernutrition rate was 12.3％ (21/171) if based on body mass index ＜ 18.5 kg/m2 and 19.9％ (34/171) if evaluated from the score of nutritional defect part of NRS 2002.Only 71 patients (61.2％) at nutritional risk received nutritional support,while 5 of 55 patients (9.1％) without nutritional risk received nutritional support.The average ratio of parenteral nutrition to enteral nutrition was 23∶ 1.Intravenous calories intake was 56.78 ± 8.20 k J/ (kg · d) ; the intake of nitrogen was 0.06 ± 0.01 g/ (kg · d),and the ratio of calories to nitrogen was 204∶ 1.Conclusions A large proportion of inpatients with non-end-stage later cancer were at nutritional risk,which is associated with tumor types.The application of nutritional support should be further standardized,particularly for patients at nutritional risk but with low nutritional support.Furthermore,whether the clinical outcome of inpatients at nutritional risk may be improved by nutritional support still requires further investigation.