Strategies and needs for nutritional support in cancer surgery

Nutritional therapy in tumor patients undergoing surgery should be regarded as a supportive therapy. They render the operation tolerable or even feasible, and they have a positive effect on postoperative progress and wound healing. Malnourished patients definitely profit from nutritional therapy. However, the effectiveness of a nutritional regimen should not be overestimated: postoperative progress, wound healing, and complication rate depend not only on nutritional status but also on the nature of the operation, age, and preoperative treatment. As a rule, parenteral feeding is superior to enteral feeding directly after surgery. Enteral nutritive regimens are to be favored when long-term feeding is indicated: in this case the advantages of this type of feeding prevail.