Malnutrition Screening Tools for Cancer Patients - A Study

This transcript discusses a cross-sectional study conducted at Mater Cancer Care Center to determine the effectiveness of malnutrition screening tools for cancer patients. The study used two screening tools, the Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST) and the patient-completed abridged PG-SGA, to identify malnutrition in patients undergoing cancer treatment. The study aimed to determine the number of patients suffering from cancer and malnutrition simultaneously and determining the competency level between the screening tools while determining the malnutrition affected people. The study found that 30 to 60% of cancer patients develop malnutrition, and the screening tools were effective in identifying malnutrition in patients. The findings were published in national and international research papers.

Running head: TRANSCRIPT FOR THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION
TRANSCRIPT FOR THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1TRANSCRIPT FOR THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION
Page 1
We all know that cancer is one of the leading causes for the drastic increase in the
morbidity and mortality rates around the world as more than 300 million people are affected with
cancer. Further due to harsh and effective treatment sessions, patients undergoing cancer
treatment faces malnutrition related issues (Britton et al. 2012). There are several malnutrition
screening tool which are being used for the identification of malnutrition condition in patients
undergoing treatments. In this project two of these tools such as malnutrition Screening Tool
(MST) and the patient completed abridged PG-SGA are used to determine malnutrition by
comparing the data collected from each of it (Planas et al. 2016).
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While discussing the background, I should mention that within the patients suffering
from cancer, 30 to 60% of the patients develop malnutrition and this occurs due to their
metabolic degradation and reduced nutritional food intake. Due to this emergence of
malnutrition, the patient’s functionality, effectiveness of the treatment, and the quality of life is
hampered (Mariette et al. 2012). There are several theories that have been described by the
European healthcare facilities to screen and determine the presence of malnutrition in patients
affected with cancer. in this project such screening and detection was carried out in Mater Cancer
Care Center or MCCC where the audit for malnutrition detection using the above mentioned
screening tools were carried out (Hébuterne et al. 2014).

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This page describes the PICO question for this project. As you can see, P or the
population of this study is the patients who are undergoing intravenous treatment for their cancer
whereas the intervention (I) applied was the two screening tools such as abridged PG-SGA and
MST which was further compared (C) by dietician completed PG-SGA and handgrip strength
test. Finally the measured outcome will be determination of patients who are suffering from
malnutrition after being treated with harsh medical treatments or their metabolic degradation and
prepare a list of such patients so that they can be provided guidance by a dietician.
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Further, the hypothesis of this study was related to malnutrition condition and the two
screening tools. The first hypothesis determined that malnutrition was prevailing in all the
patients suffering from cancer. Whereas the second hypothesis determined that without screening
the fact with these two screening tools and by comparing by MST, it cannot be stated that all the
patients of cancers suffer from malnutrition.
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Next is the details of the study where the aim, objectives and the study design has been
mentioned. The aim of the study was to determine the number of patients suffering from cancer
and malnutrition simultaneously and determining the competency level between the screening
tools while determining the malnutrition affected people. Whereas the objective was to
determine the number of cancer patients suffering from malnutrition in MCCC and then
disseminate the information collected from these audit to the staff. For this purpose, the research
or the audit process selected was observation based cross sectional study.

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Further, the setting of the study was a yearly audit in which the healthcare professionals,
the dieticians and food service department officers collected the data and provided them to the
research authority. the duration of the study was from 30th april to 4th may and during that period
every cancer patient having the age above 18, going through the treatment and admitted to the
healthcare facility throughout the phase was included (inclusion criteria). Whereas, the patients
being discharged in between or prior to the period, as well as having the age under 18 was not
included in the study. Further, all the patients were included in the study after receiving consent
from them.
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The procedure of the study started with collecting consent and proving training related to
three screening tools such as abridged PG-SGA, the MST and the dietitian-completed PG-SGA
in which, MST worked as comparator. However, to remove bias, all the patients’ health
condition was observed using dieticians. Further they also took part in handgrip strength so that
remaining bias after the observation of the dietician can also be removed. Finally depending on
the score of these screening tools, which is generally less than 2 or greater than 2, the dietician
suggestion for malnutrition is provided to the patients.
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in the data collection and management, all the data collected from the audit and dieticians
observation will be collected in a CFS table and will be compared to the screening tool data.
Further, all these data will be stored I two formats, such as the electronic data will be stored in
the server with security pin and the hardcopy of the data will be stored for the research purpose.

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The data will have a sign saying “data to be destroyed after 15 years” of the student’s thesis
completion so that further research on the topic can be conducted.
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There are several ways in which a data can be projected after completion of the project.
In this case a presentation will be prepared for the entire MCCC so that the staff and the patients
can understand the effectiveness of this screening experiment. Further to spread the findings, the
complete research will be published in the international and national research papers and finally
the entire research will be published so that with reference to that more research can be
conducted.
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Further, I would like to mention that this research does not require any funding or
monetary help from the healthcare facility as it is a simple quality audit with student research
project and will not involve any costly aspect. Further, ethical consideration is also taken into
account prior to implementation of the screening tool questions to the patients. The questions are
simply based on the diet and nutritional quotient while their care process in MCCC and hence,
ethical breaching was avoided in this quality audit research project.

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References
Britton, B., Clover, K., Bateman, L., Odelli, C., Wenham, K., Zeman, A. and Carter, G.L., 2012.
Baseline depression predicts malnutrition in head and neck cancer patients undergoing
radiotherapy. Supportive care in cancer, 20(2), pp.335-342.
Hébuterne, X., Lemarié, E., Michallet, M., de Montreuil, C.B., Schneider, S.M. and Goldwasser,
F., 2014. Prevalence of malnutrition and current use of nutrition support in patients with
cancer. Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, 38(2), pp.196-204.
Mariette, C., De Botton, M.L. and Piessen, G., 2012. Surgery in esophageal and gastric cancer
patients: what is the role for nutrition support in your daily practice?. Annals of surgical
oncology, 19(7), pp.2128-2134.
Planas, M., Álvarez-Hernández, J., León-Sanz, M., Celaya-Pérez, S., Araujo, K. and De
Lorenzo, A.G., 2016. Prevalence of hospital malnutrition in cancer patients: a sub-analysis of the
PREDyCES® study. Supportive Care in Cancer, 24(1), pp.429-435.