Being overweight or obese may hide true nutritional status of patients with cancer

Obesity increases the risk for cancer, and many patients are overweight or obese at diagnosis. But they appear to be well-nourished so they are not screened. Researchers at the chemotherapy department at Larissa General Clinic in Thessaly, Greece, conducted a study of 1,469 patients with advanced cancer; 594 of them were overweight or obese. Using nutritional screenings and questionnaires, the researchers determined if overweight or obese patients were well nourished, at risk, or malnourished.

The patients were asked about weight loss, mobility, psychological stress, medical history, eating habits, and their view of their own nutritional status. Study results indicated that 12% of the overweight and obese cancer patients were, in fact, malnourished and more than half were at risk for being malnourished.

Whether patients with cancer benefit from maintaining a heavy body weight or achieving some limited degree of weight loss is unclear.

However, these researchers and others stress that obesity or overweight status in a patient with a cancer diagnosis should not preclude nutritional screening, which is usually done by a nurse, because nutritional status can have a huge impact on quality of life, treatment response, and overall patient outcomes.