Pretreatment nutritional status is associated with quality of life in patients with gastric cancer: a cross-sectional study from Iran

Introduction: In the present study, we evaluated the association of nutritional status and quality of life (QoL) in patients with gastric cancer (GC).

Materials and methods: In the present cross-sectional study, the study sample consisted of 299 patients with GC. The assessment of the nutritional status and QoL of patients was done after diagnosis and before initiation of any treatment. The nutritional status was assessed using Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA). The 30-item European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Core Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTCQLQ-C30) was used for the assessment of QoL score. Statistical significance was reported at the p < 0.05 level.

Results: The mean age of participants was 67.39 ± 12.04 years and 65.5% of them were males. According to the PG-SGA, 28.5% of patients were in good nutritional condition. The patients with better nutrition status had significantly better global and functional categories scores (p < 0.001) except social functioning. Moreover, they had significantly lower scores in symptoms severity except for dyspnea, constipation, and diarrhea. The result of regression analysis indicated that after adjusting to confounders, nutrition status was significantly associated with global score and functional categories score except for social and emotional functioning scores. Moreover, in terms of symptom categories, there was a significant association between PG-SGA score and all symptoms except diarrhea and dyspnea.

Conclusion: The results of the present study showed the significant association between nutrition status and functioning and symptom categories of QoL in patients with GC.