Malnutrition Diagnosis Among Cancer Outpatients Using Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool in Nyeri County Referral Hospital, Kenya

Abstract

Cancer burden remain unacceptably high with global incidence of 19.3 Million and 10million cancer mortalities according to the 2020 global cancer estimates. There has been notable improvement in cancer care in Kenya but malnutrition in cancer patients remain highly under-recognised and the malnutrition screening tools remain under-utilised especially in Nyeri county. The main objective of this study was to determine the malnutrition risk among the cancer outpatients attending Nyeri County Referral Hospital using Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool using analytical cross-sectional study design. Sixty one percent of the respondents were female while 39% were male. Breast cancer was the most common cancer type in the population (39%), followed by esophageal and throat cancer at 14.5% and gastric cancer at 14%. Prostate cancer was the most prevalent among the male respondents at 11%. Using the MUST, more than half (51.7%) of the respondents were at a high risk of developing malnutrition, followed by low risk (32.6%) with only 15.7% respondents being at a medium risk of malnutrition. Using the BMI, half of the respondents, (50%) had a normal nutrition status and only 19.8% respondents were underweight. There is a significant difference between classifying nutrition status of cancer patients using BMI and Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (P<0.05). Malnutrition Universal Screening tool is easy to use and has the ability to identify the risk of malnutrition among cancer patients and can be adopted in cancer care to improve cancer prognosis and reduce malnutrition rates among cancer patients.