Authors (including presenting author) :
Wong WS(1) and Lee SPP(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Dietetic Department, United Christian Hospital
Objectives :
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. PGSGA Short Form (Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment) is a valid nutrition assessment tool to identify the prevalence of symptoms of on palliative care patients. This study examined the impact of nutrition intervention on patients in inpatient hospice care.
Methodology :
Patients admitted into hospice unit of The United Christian Hospital were recruited between Dec 2020 - Dec 2021. The primary outcome focused on the change in overall short form PG-SGA. Secondary outcome was the change in selective nutrition-related parameters. Paired-t test was the tool to analyze statistically significant difference of the pre- and post-nutrition interventions.
Result & Outcome :
This study demonstrated that there were applicable strategies and measurable outcomes in nutrition management for inpatient hospice care. A total of 146 patients were recruited. 37 patients had completed the short form PG-SGA before and after nutrition intervention. The total PG-SGA score before and after nutrition intervention improved 8.16 ± 4.83 versus 7.13 ± 5.03, however, it was not statistically significant (P=0.17). Other nutrition-related symptoms demonstrated promising improvement including nausea (from 16% to 11%), taste change (from 19%to 11%), mouth sores (from 14% to 8%) and problem swallowing (from 11% to 5%), but the changes were not significant (P=0.42, P=0.32, P=0.16, P=0.16 respectively). Furthermore, percentage of patients without further subjective weight loss was improved from 57% to 38% with 12 days average length of stay, nutrition-related parameters showed that the percentage of subjective loss of appetite improved from 35% to 27%. However, activity level gradually deteriorated and there was an increase percentage of patients reporting spending most of the day in bed/ chair.
