Abstract The incidence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma is relatively low in Western countries such as Europe and the United
States, but is high in southern China. Compared with other tumors, patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma are more likely to
suffer from malnutrition, especially after patients undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy, their appetite, eating and digesting
abilities are decreased, which in turn causes insufficient intake and/or malabsorption, and ultimately leads to malnutrition. In
addition, malnutrition will reduce the treatment effect and quality of life of patients, and even lead to death. Therefore, the early
prevention and treatment of malnutrition is of great help to the treatment effect and quality of life of patients. The principle of
selection of nutritional treatment approaches for nasopharyngeal carcinoma is basically the same as that for other malignant
tumors, but it also has its characteristics: ① Because patients with side effects of treatment can easily give up oral feeding,
nasogastric feeding tube is the most common way of short⁃term enteral nutrition therapy. ②If enteral nutrition treatment is longer
than 4 weeks, consider using percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy or percutaneous endoscopic jejunostomy, the patients who use
this method will lead less traumatic, have a long indwelling tube and not easy to block, so that the patients can have a high
quality of life. ③ Parenteral nutrition should be used when enteral nutrition is insufficient or intolerant, once the patient's
condition improves, enteral nutrition should be changed as soon as possible. ④ Nutritional treatment for patients with
nasopharyngeal carcinoma should appropriately increase the fat energy supply ratio, and the recommended protein supply is 1.0～ 1.5 g/(kg·d).
Chinese Society of Nutritional Oncology,Chinese Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. Expert opinion on nutritional treatment for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma[J]. Electron J Metab Nutr Cancer, 2021, 8(6): 600-604.
