Hyponutrition among newly diagnosed gastric cancer

Objectives: This study aims to determine the malnutrition status among Vietnamese patients newly diagnosed with gastric cancer (GC).

Background: GC remains the top rank of common and deadly diseases. With limited clinical manifestation, most GC patients were diagnosed at late stages when tumor is not radically resected. Malnutrition was associated with poor prognosis of GC, such as prolonged hospitalization, limited treatment efficacy and low survival rate.

Methods: The cross-sectional descriptive study recruited 77 patients newly diagnosed with GC and 90 healthy individuals (HC). The data used for this study were approved by the local Ethical Committee. The data were analysed on STATA 14.0 and GraphPad Prism 8.0.

Results: We observed the male dominant distribution in GC cohort and over 65% of GC were firstly diagnosed at advanced stages (III and IV). Anemia was detected in about 50% of GC patients. Hyponutrition was prevalent in newly diagnosed GC. We found the decreased tendency of anemia related indexes from HC to early stages (I and II) and advanced stages (III and IV) of GC patients.

Conclusion: Anemia and hypoproteinemia occurred frequently among Vietnamese newly diagnosed GC. The nutrition therapy would benefit GC patients (Tab. 4, Fig. 4, Ref. 20).