Abstract

Author(s): Amancio, Naiza do Nascimento1; Saldanha, Camila Armstrong2; Spexoto, Maria Claudia Bernardes1

Introduction: The assessment of nutritional status is very important in patients with cancer and the adductor pollicis muscle thickness (APMT) appears as an anthropometric prognostic indicator simpler than conventional anthropometry to identify early malnutrition.

Objective: To evaluate the relation between the adductor pollicis muscle thickness with the sociodemographic, clinical variables and the nutritional diagnosis from the PatientGenerated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) and conventional anthropometry of patients with cancer in clinical treatment.

Methods: Cross-sectional study with 110 patients with cancer undergoing clinical treatment in a private and specialized clinic in the interior of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Was used sociodemographic and clinical variables. The nutritional status was obtain through PG-SGA and conventional anthropometry. The Student’s t-test or the Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was use. For the associations of interest, the chisquare test (χ2) was use. The level of significance was set at 5% (p <0.05).

Results: Participated 110 patients with cancer undergoing clinical outpatient treatment were the most women (62,7%) with breast neoplasm (30.0%) and non-metastatic (53.6%). When the means of APMT was compare according to sociodemographic and clinical variables, no significant differences was find between the groups, being significant for body mass index and PG-SGA. The APMT measure showed a significant relationship with gender (p=0.030), work activity (p=0.014) and with the diagnostic groups (p=0.037). There was a significant association between the nutritional status determined by APMT with calf circumference (CC) and PG-SGA.

Conclusion: We suggest the APMT as an alternative measure in clinical practice to assess the nutritional status of patients with cancer concomitant with conventional anthropometry and PG-SGA because it appear to be a promising measure for the evaluation of muscle compartment depletion, which can be perform in a simple way and without an equation to determine the nutritional diagnosis.