Physical Performance, Sarcopenia and Malnutrition-Basic Test Set for Everyday Use in Cancer Therapy

Testing physical performance, malnutrition, and sarcopenia is recommended in numerous guidelines for hematological-oncological patients. However, due to economic conditions and the large number of test options, these tests have not made it into clinical routine. The aim of this study is to propose a practical compromise that could allow routine testing under the current conditions.

We conducted a prospective, monocentric, small-scale cohort study. In our interdisciplinary tumor outpatient clinic, we investigated time required for malnutrition screening (PG-SGA long form), malnutrition diagnostics (GLIM), and the algorithm for sarcopenia diagnostics (EWGSOP II) in a cohort of 29 cancer patients. Further, correlation analyses of the individual tests of the examination instruments were used to achieve a possible reduction in the required number of test methods.

In this cohort, we identified a substantial number of patients with malnutrition (55.2%) and risk of sarcopenia (20.7%). However, this still requires 19 min even at the third visit of the patients. In order to identify potential duplications and thus unnecessary time expenditure, the tests were correlated with each other. This revealed that the assisted tests could be reduced to 3, which took only 6 min in total during the third visit.

Within this study, we were able to reduce the number of tests to three-grip strength, bioelectrical impedance analysis, and Sit-to-Stand-without failing to diagnose 96.6% of the patients with risk of malnutrition and sarcopenia. This allowed us to reduce the necessary assistance time by 70% and thus made it usable in the daily routine.