Nutritional status and chemotherapy-associated toxicity in patients with cervical cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Cervical cancer (CC) is a public health problem; it is the second most common cause of cancer in Mexico and the third cause of death worldwide. Malnutrition in the cancer patient is present in 80-90% of cases of advanced disease. Objective: To analyze the relationship of the nutritional status of patients with clinical Stage IV and recurrent CC with palliative chemotherapy-associated toxicity. Materials and methods: This was a prospective, descriptive, and observational study. Patients with clinical Stage IV CC recurring on palliative chemotherapy were recruited. Nutritional status was assessed before treatment as well as its relationship with toxicity. Associations between qualitative categorical variables were searched for with Spearman's correlation, and statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) for dichotomous variables were looked for using Fischer's exact test. Results: A total of 17 patients were included, out of which 5 (29.4%) had normal nutritional status, 8 patients (47%) had moderate malnutrition, and 4 patients (23.5%) had severe malnutrition. A positive correlation was found between the degree of malnutrition and the presence of diarrhea (rho = 0.626), nausea (rho = 0.556), and hypoalbuminemia (rho = 0.559). Conclusions: Nutritional status before chemotherapy was shown to be highly important, since a malnutrition status implies higher toxicity by the treatment, which entails an increase in malnutrition for the next chemotherapy session as well as hospital readmissions. (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).