Anorexia
Evaluating Nutritional Status

People with cancer should have a thorough nutritional assessment by a healthcare team member early in the course of their disease. Nutritional status can range from optimal nutrition to malnutrition in people with cancer. Malnutrition can be both undernutrition and overnutrition.

There are several ways to measure your nutritional status. A record of your weight loss over time and a record of your food intake are the best indicators of Anorexia.

Current weight, weight change over the past two weeks, weight six months ago and weight a year ago are usually the measurements that will be evaluated. Dietary intake can be measured many ways. Some common ways are:

• recall of all food eaten in the past 24 hours



• 3 day food diary - all food eaten for a three day period is recorded



• calorie counts - usually done in the hospital; all the calories for a period, usually 3 days, are recorded

Anthropometric measures are a method of determining skinfold circumference to determine whether weight loss has included muscle loss.

Sometimes laboratory tests can measure nutritional indicators, although none will specifically diagnose malnutrition. Because difficulties in nutritional status happen over time, they are often chronic in nature, which makes testing even more difficult.

Common laboratory tests sometimes used to test for nutritional status include:

• Complete blood count



• Total lymphocyte count



• Albumin



• Transferrin



• Prealbumin



• Glucose

Benefits of talking with a healthcare team member

Nutritional counseling with a member of the healthcare team is the most effective and least costly intervention for anorexia. Studies have shown that after an educational counseling session, patients improve their daily calorie intake by about 450 calories per day to include more calories and nutrients.⁵ This increase in daily calories is short-lived however, unless other actions are included in the plan to maintain nutrition.