Malnutrition in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Introduction: Cancer-related malnutrition is often an unnoticed problem, although almost 60% of all oncological patients are already malnourished before diagnosis and more than 25% die of the consequences.
Material and methods: In this prospective observational study, the nutritional status of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) was assessed pre-, peri- and postoperatively using Body Mass Index (BMI), Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) and Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) over four months. Patients with orthognatic surgery served as a control group due to comparable nasogastric tube feeding.
Results: Patients with OSCC showed a worse nutritional status pre-therapeutically than the control group and fulfilled the criteria for malnutrition in SGA and BIA. Peri- and post- operative, the nutritional status deteriorated in both groups. In the group of OSCC patients, the nutritional status improved from the second postoperative week, but at the end of the observation period, the status was still predominantly in the pathological range according to BIA and SGA. In the control group, the nutritional status returned to baseline during the observation period.
Conclusion: Based on these data, malnutrition is also widespread in the collective of oncological patients with OSCC. In order to improve the nutritional status of OSCC patients in general and thus also the prognosis of the patient, it is recommended to assess the nutritional status before therapy. Standard procedures such as SGA or BIA should be established and used. BMI alone is not suitable for this purpose. Professional nutrition therapy should be introduced as an integral part of the therapy in order to improve the patients’ prognosis.