Cross-sectional study of body composition in cancer patients

Abstract

Background: The human body composition is consisted of four important parts; water, muscles, bones, and fat. It can be used as an obesity indicator and nutritional status for general population. The assessment of body composition by noninvasive bioelectrical impedance analysis may be a tool to improve the management in cancer patients. Objective: To study body composition in cancer patients. Material and methods:This cross-sectional description study consisted of 78 volunteer cancer patients at Radiotherapy unit, Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai hospital in May, 2017. We divided patients into two groups; head and neck cancer and non-head and neck cancer. We hypothesized that the body composition of head and neck cancer patients is different from those with other types of cancer due to their disease and treatment. We analyzed patients’ body composition by using a body composition analyzer (Bioelectrical impedance analysis: Tanita SC-330) and using Excel’s descriptive statistics tool for statistical analysis. Results: There were 49 females (62.8%) and 29 males (37.2%) with an average age of 61.2 years old. Most of the patients were diagnosed with cervical cancer (23%) followed by head and neck cancer (21.8%). The result showed that the average of body fat percentage was 21.8%, muscle mass was 37.8 Kg, basal metabolic rate (BMR) was 4806.7 KJ, and visceral fat rating was 6.38. For the body mass index (BMI), we found that 15.4% of patients were underweight, 65.4% were normal, and 19.2% were overweight. Comparing to other types of cancer, patients with head and neck cancer had statistically significant lower BMI and muscle mass. Conclusions: Our results suggested that most of the cancer patients in this study had the body composition within the normal reference range. Head and neck cancer patients had lower body composition than others.