Abstract

Author(s): Nogueira Aguiar, Ana Patrícia1; Soares de Oliveira Araripe, Tamara2; Dantas Cordeiro, Mariana3; Raissa Oliveira Ricarte, Juliana1; De Souza Gomes Cabral, Nayara3; Sucupira Silva, Luciana2; Silva de Castro, Hortência2; Da Silva Mendonça, Priscila1

Introduction: Malnutrition is common in patients with haematological malignancies. The assessment of the nutritional status of hospitalized oncology patients can be performed by calculating body mass index (BMI), measuring the circumference of the arm (CB), tricipital skinfold (DCT) and calculating arm circumference (CMB). The thickness of the Adductor Muscle of the Thumb (EMAP) is a simple, noninvasive and inexpensive tool for assessing body muscle contents, but there are not many studies about the use ofthis nutritional assessment technique in onco-hematological patients.

Objective: To determine the sensitivity of EMAP for nutritional evaluation of onco-hematological patients.

Methodology: This is a cross-sectional, analytical study with 133 onco-hematological patients attended at a University Hospital from Northeastern Brazil. They were submitted to nutritional assessment through the measurement of weight, height, BMI, CB, TDC, CMB and EMAP of the dominant hand.

Results: The average thickness of the adductor muscle of the thumb was 11.9 ± 3.2 mm. For malnutrition, the EMAP sensitivity was 87% for the cut points found with the Receiver Operating Characteristic (12.8mm) curve, and the specificity was 56.3%. There was a significant correlation (p <0.001) of EMAP with CB, CMB and BMI.

Discussion: EMAP presented a high sensitivity in the diagnosis of malnutrition and specificity of 56.3%, thus providing less delinquency in nutritional management, since it better detects patients at nutritional risk than healthy ones.

Conclusion: EMAP has been shown to be a sensitive method for the detection of malnutrition in onco-hematological patients, and it can be used in clinical practice.