Nutrition Status and Food Consumption Pattern of Children with Cancer

Since cancer is a terminal disease, the medical treatment of most children is usually more emphasized than the nutritional management but the two complement each other.Less emphasis on diet therapy increases morbidity and infections since the immunity of these children is weakened and they are not able to fight the disease effectively. The authors investigated the nutritional status, care and food consumption patterns of children with cancer to find out the foods consumption patterns of child cancer patients and how they impacted on their nutritional status. Research findings revealed that 32% of the children were stunted, 26% were underweight while 12% were wasted. The findings confirmed that all the 18.3% children in the advanced stage of the disease were malnourished.A majority(88.5%)of the children s food intake was affected by the type of treatment received while the disease process affected 71.8% of the patient s food intake. Therefore as treatment becomes more vigorous and as the disease advances the patients tend to develop more nutritional problems since their food intake is affected.Nutritionists should emphasize importance of adherence to the amounts of nutrients.