Nutritional Risk Assessment by Scored Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment Associated with Demographic Characteristics in 23,904 Common Malignant Tumors Patients

Nutr Cancer. 2019;71(1):50-60. doi: 10.1080/01635581.2019.1566478. Epub 2019 Feb 9.

Abstract

Malnutrition is a problem affecting tumor patients greatly. This study aims to investigate whether demographic characteristics are related to the malnutrition of cancer patients. Twenty-three thousand nine hundred and four (23,904) patients with 16 common malignant tumors were enrolled in the study. Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) was used as a screening tool to assess the nutritional risk of patients and analysis of variance was used to compare PG-SGA scores of patients. Correlations between PG-SGA scores and demographic characteristics were evaluated by correlation analysis. We observed that 57.88% tumor patients had some degree of malnutrition (score ≥4) and only 20.61% were well-nourished (score 0-1). Screening scores were higher among older patients for most of the tumors. PG-SGA scores showed the significant difference between females and males in some tumors. In addition, the PG-SGA scores of some tumors were significantly different in various types of medical insurances, education levels, occupations, regions, and nationalities. Correlation analysis indicated the existence of associations between PG-SGA scores and demographic characteristics. Understanding the distribution of nutritional risk of tumor patients and the correlations between the PG-SGA scores and demographic characteristics could help identify subgroups who may benefit from targeted interventions to improve the effect of clinical treatment and the quality of life for oncology patients.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Educational Status
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Insurance, Health
  • Male
  • Malnutrition / etiology*
  • Middle Aged
  • Neoplasms / complications*
  • Risk Assessment*