LAUSR

Nutrition is essential for the physical and psychological well-being and for treatment tolerance in patients with cancer. Several biological systems are cooperating to provide our bodies with adequate nutrients and energy, the urge to seek food and eat, the oro-pharyngo-gastro-intestinal system to assimilate ingredients from meals and the metabolic system to guide and distribute the flow of nutrients among organs. If any of these systems fails to work normally, inadequate food intake may lead to deleterious consequences for quality of life and impact clinical outcome. Therefore, international nutrition guidelines for patients with cancer recommend ensuring adequate intake of nutrients and energy by offering dietary counselling and if this proves inadequate, artificial nutrition (AN): primarily tube feeding, and if this proves inadequate, intravenous nutrition.1 However, it needs to be considered that when deciding to use AN the evidence base differs depending on whether impaired food intake is caused by either anorexia in the context of activated …