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# Home enteral nutrition helps gastrointestinal cancer patients
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/home_enteral_nutrition_helps_gastrointestinal_cancer_1031160511/
- Published: 2016-10-31T18:04:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T16:28:19.000Z
- Description: In a trial of 79 malnourished patients who had surgery for upper gastrointestinal cancer, those given home enteral nutrition held their weight while those receiving only nutritional counselling lost 3.6 kg on average over two months, and they were more likely to finish chemotherapy.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Diet, Nutrition, #vivvo-import

Monday Oct 31, 2016 (foodconsumer.org) -- Not all nutritional therapies may help cure a specific cancer, but proper nutrition during and after treatments proves to be important for patients' health status. For one thing, home enteral nutrition can help prevent weight loss in post-surgical patients during chemotherapy and help them complete chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy can be very toxic for many patients and some could not bear the toxicity enough to go through the procedure because of the adverse effects from the treatment. Nutritional support is important in this case to provide the physical and physiological strength the patients need to complete any therapy.

The current study was intended to examine how home enteral nutrition may help patients with malnutrition who completed surgery for gastrointestinal cancer. In the trial study, 79 patients were randomized to receive either (38) continued enteral nutrition at home or (41) nutritional counselling only.

As a result, as expected, patients who received home enteral nutrition were able to maintain their mean body weight while those only receiving nutritional counselling lost an average of 3.6 kg body weight during a two-month period. Also, those offered home enteral nutrition were more likely to complete chemotherapy than those receiving nutritional counselling only.

Home enteral nutrition is safe and when used, results in no side effects.

The study concludes that home enteral nutrition helps prevent weight loss during chemotherapy in malnourished patients with upper gastrointestinal cancer surgically removed. (David Liu)

[*Cecilia Gavazzi, Silvia Colatruglio, Filippo Valoriani, Vincenzo Mazzaferro, Annarita Sabbatini, Roberto Biffi, Luigi Mariani, Rosalba Miceli, Impact of home enteral nutrition in malnourished patients with upper gastrointestinal cancer: A multicentre randomised clinical trial, European Journal of Cancer Volume 64, September 2016, Pages 107–112*](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959804916321992?ref=foodconsumer.org)