1Department of General Surgery/Medical Oncology Center, Aviation General Hospital/Beijing Institute of Translational Medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10012, China; 2Department of Nutrition, Daping Hospital, The Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400042, China
Abstract： Nutrition education is an essential component of nutrition intervention and a preferred method of nutrition therapy. Nutrition education for cancer patients follows the basic principles of nutrition education in the general population, but more targeted and more rich in its content, including 10 aspects: answer questions from patients/family/caretakers, outline the aim of nutrition diagnosis, evaluate dietary, nutrition and function status, review lab and instrument exam, deliver dietary and nutrition suggestion, clarify cancer pathophysiology, scheme nutrition intervention, inform nutrition intervention complication and solution, predict the result of nutrition intervention, plan and carry out nutrition follow-up. Studies have shown that nutrition education to cancer patients is an economic, practical and effective measure. Nutrition education is not only imparting knowledge of diet and nutrition, more important is learning how to improve the nutrition status, changing in eating behavior, forming good habits of diet and nutrition, in order to improve patients’ nutrition status and health. Therefore, nutrition education is a long-term process and a form of process. Due to higher malnutrition rate, more complex causes and more serious outcomes, cancer patients thus need more to accept a long-term nutrition education, to shorten the length of hospital stay, to reduce the complications and to improve clinical outcomes, and finally to improve the quality of life and prolong survival time.
