Diagnosis of malnutrition and its relationship with prognosis in hospitalized patients with oncological pathology.

Background And Aims: Medical oncology inpatients are at a very high risk of malnutrition, and the presence of complications associated with malnutrition is significant in their evolution. It is necessary to have adequate tools in the diagnosis of malnutrition.

Objectives: This study is aimed to assess the nutritional status of cancer inpatients and compare the incidence of complications based on the nutritional diagnosis with different tools.

Methods: An observational, longitudinal, and retrospective study was designed on 149 patients admitted to the Oncology Service who were requested nutritional and medical treatment between January 2014 and June 2017. Epidemiological, clinical, anthropometric, and nutritional data were collected. Nutritional status was assessed using the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), and the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria.

Results: The age of the patients was 61.61 (15.96) years. 67.8% of the patients were men. Most of the patients were in advanced tumor stages (stage III (15.3%); stage IV (77.1%)). The median of the MUST was 2 (0-3) (High risk: 83 (55.7%)). The median MNA was 17 (14-20) (poor nutritional status: 65 (43.6%); risk of malnutrition 71 (47.7%)). According to the GLIM criteria, 115 (77.2%) had malnutrition, and 97 (65.1%) had severe malnutrition. According to MNA, an increase in mortality was observed (MNA <17: 24.6% vs. MNA >17: 7.9%; pvalue <0.01). Multivariate analysis showed that poor nutritional status measured with MNA is related to an increased probability of mortality regardless of the stage of the disease and the patient's age OR: 4.19 95% CI (1.41-12.47); p-value = 0.02.

Conclusions: Malnutrition among cancer patients in whom a nutritional assessment is requested during admission is very high. In hospitalized patients with oncological pathology, it was observed that malnutrition measured by MNA acts as a mortality risk factor.