The effect of nutritional support in cancerpatients

Introduction: Malnutrition is an overlooked challenge in patientswho suffer from cancer. Malnutrition is associated withmuscle loss, reduction in quality of life, and survival time . Also,weight loss in cancer patients is a worrying fundamental changethat predicts the progression of the disease and shortens the survivaltime. Nutritional assessment and intervention should be asimportant parts for cancer treatment. Some patients are unableto obtain adequate food orally that cause cachexia and anorexia,and may require nutritional support through Enteral Nutrition(EN) or Parenteral Nutrition (PN).EN and PN methods should be used in cancer patients who haveundergone surgery and unable to receive food. When EN (oralor tube feeding) is not possible or does not fulfill nutritionalneeds, supplemental parenteral nutrition (SPN) can be substituted.In the following, we try to investigate the role of EN &PN in these patients.Materials and Methods: The PubMed, Web of Science andScopus were searched with tumor, cancer, enteral nutrition,parenteral nutrition, nutritional support and parenteral nutritionkeywords from۲۰۲۰ to ۲۰۲۳.Results: Early feeding of EN and PN has a positive effect onspeeding up the healing process of cancer patients .Conclusion: Nutritional issues are neglected during cancertreatment, even though there is evidence that nutrition can potentiallyimprove quality of life, tolerance to systemic therapy,tumor response, and survival. It is recommended that nutritionalassessment and intervention be maintained as much as possible.In fact, it should be a vital part of any comprehensive cancertreatment plan. Aggressive nutritional intervention is escalated after careful assessment of inadequacy of the physiologic oralroute (ONS or EN). If EN is not possible, we suggest TPN,which potentially has a key "permissive" role in cancer care,and using this method we will see a significant effect in acceleratingthe healing process .