Chemotherapy impact on weight loss and gastrointestinal symptoms in cancer patients: A pilot study from Cancer Centre in northern India
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Abstract
Malnutritionisanimportantaspectofcancermanagementdueto factorsrelatedtothediseaseandtreatment.Thisisespecially importantfor patients receiving chemotherapy. With objective of toevaluatetherelationshipoftumortypebylocationand presenceofgastrointestinalsymptomswithweightimpactof patients receivingchemotherapy, After screening 440 patients 100 patients who had locally advanced un-resectable and/or metastatic cancers receiving chemotherapywereincludedinour study.Adetailedanalysisofthepatients’ recordswasdonetoidentify symptomsthatfactor incausingor indicatingpatientswith malnutritionbasedonweightmeasurement. The distributionof tumors in the studied patients was GallBladder (25%),Ovary(18.57%),esophagus&Gastroesophageal junction (15.71%),Stomach(9.2%), Pancreas(10%)andothers(21.42%). Inthe study(42.5%) patientsexperiencedconsistentweightloss.The prevalenceofweight losswashighestinGallbladdercancer(64.2%) andlowestinovariancancers(18.4%).Commonrelevantsymptoms experienced,included nausea(58.2%),anorexia(45.4%), constipation(32.5%),abdominalpain(22.6%),vomiting(8.6%),and diarrhea(4.6%).Itwas observedthatahigherpercentageofpatients withsignificantweightloss(>5%)experiencednausea(61.2%), anorexia(49.5%),vomiting (12.4%),diarrhea(6.8%)
