OBJECTIVES:

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer worldwide. Malnutrition also has a major impact on disease outcome in patients diagnosed with lung cancer. We aimed to assess the proportion of malnourished patients and to find associations between nutritional status and quality of life, stress, treatment tolerance, side effects and incidence of complications.

METHODS:

Our quantitative, cross-sectional study was performed between 25.10.2021 and 27.12.2021 at the Oncology Department of the Markusovszky University Teaching Hospital in Hungary. The target group for non-randomized purposive sampling was patients aged 39-83 years with stage III and IV non-small cell lung cancer, undergoing chemotherapy or additional radiotherapy, inoperable/surgery (n=76). We excluded patients who died during our study. Data collection consisted of self-administered and validated questionnaires (MNA, SF-36, PSS14). Besides descriptive statistical analysis, χ²-test, two-sample t-test, ANOVA and correlation were performed using Microsoft Excel (p<0.05).

RESULTS:

Based on MNA scores, 52 people were in the normal range, 21 in the vulnerable group and only 3 in the undernourished group. Significant associations were found between nutritional status and physical functioning, stress level, physical activity, role limitations due to emotional problems and social activity (p<0.01). No associations were found between poorer nutritional status and poor tolerance to therapy (p=0.79), incidence of postoperative complications (p=0.445) and higher incidence of chemotherapy side effects (p<0.001). There was no significant difference between men and women in the incidence of malnutrition (p=0.53).

CONCLUSIONS:

Our research has shown that malnutrition is not common among lung cancer patients. However, nurses have a key role to play in improving quality of life and health education.