• Pei-Ling Tang, Hsiu-Hung Wang, Huey-Shyan Lin, Wen-Shan Liu, Lih-Mih Chen, and Fan-Hao Chou.
• Research Center of Medical Informatics, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (R.O.C.); Department of Nursing, Meiho University, Pingtung, Taiwan (R.O.C.); College of Nursing, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (R.O.C.); Research Center of Medical Informatics, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (R.O.C.).
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2018 Mar 1; 55 (3): 864-871.

ContextThe side effects of radiotherapy (RT) and the occurrence of comorbidity often result in appetite loss in patients, which leads to serious nutritional problems, significantly affecting the patients' treatment results and disease prognosis.ObjectivesWe aimed to investigate changes in the body composition of patients with cancer from the time they received RT to three months after completion of RT.MethodsA total of 101 cancer patients who received RT, which included head or neck cancer, chest or breast cancer, and abdominal or pelvic cancer patients, were recruited. A longitudinal study design was adopted, in which the body composition analyzer In Body3.0 was used to obtain patient data at six different time points. The data were analyzed through generalized estimating equation.ResultsAll patients with cancer had the lowest body mass index at the end of RT. For head or neck cancer patients, their total body water and muscle mass decreased significantly in the fourth week of RT and at the end of RT. For chest or breast cancer patients, their body fat mass changed significantly in the second and fourth weeks of RT (β = -0.57, P = 0.0233; β = -3.23, P = 0.0254). For abdominal or pelvic cancer patients, their total body weight and muscle mass decreased significantly in the second week of RT and at the end of RT (β = -1.07, P = 0.0248; β = -5.13, P = 0.0017; β = -1.37, P = 0.0245; β = -6.50, P = 0.0016); their body fat mass increased significantly in the third month after RT (β = 4.61, P = 0.0072).ConclusionBody composition analysis can be used to promptly and effectively monitor changes in the nutritional status of patients with cancer during the cancer treatment period; changes in the body composition at different repetitions differ between patients with dissimilar cancers.Copyright © 2017 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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