Authors (including presenting author) :
Lam W(1), Wong WS(2), Lee SPP(2)
Affiliation :
(1) Dietetic Department, Haven of Hope Hospital (2) Dietetic Department, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
Palliative care aims at promoting quality of life, symptoms management and alleviating suffering. Nutrition plays an important role in the palliative care by alleviating symptoms, promoting comfort and improving the quality of life of advanced cancer patients. PG-SGA Short Form (Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment) is a valid nutrition assessment tool to identify the prevalence of symptoms of on palliative care patients.
Objectives :
This study examined the nutrition profile of patients under hospice care in KEC by PG-SGA short form.
Methodology :
Patients admitted into hospice units of United Christian Hospital and Haven of Hope Hospital were recruited between Sep 2020 to Dec 2021 and Aug 2022 to Nov 2022 respectively. PG-SGA short form was conducted for patients during initial nutrition assessment in hospice units.
Result & Outcome :
A total of 176 patients under hospice care including 170 inpatients and 6 outpatients were recruited. There were 82 male and 94 female patients with age ranged from 37-93 years old, and the mean age was 73.4 years old. 64.8% of patients experienced weight loss during the past 2 weeks. 63.6% of them expressed their food intake were less than usual during the past month and 28.7% of those patients expressed they only consumed little solid food and 9.2% of them only tolerated liquid or nutrition supplements respectively. The most common 5 nutrition related symptoms were no appetite(44.9%), feeling full quickly (43.8%), fatigue(42.6%), dry mouth (38.6%) and nausea (26.1%).Regarding to function and activity, only 19.9% of patients expressed it was normal with no limitation. Significant portion of hospice patients had limited activity and function in which 29.5%of patients were only able to o do little activity and spend most of the day in bed or chair and6.35% of patients were mostly bed ridden. This study demonstrated that PG-SGA short form could be practical tool to assess patients under hospice care. Reassessment after nutrition intervention could be helpful for the development of more applicable strategies for nutrition management especially on nutrition related symptoms.
