Cachexia staging score and cancer survival: a review

Article: Cachexia staging score predicts survival in patients with cancer who receive palliative care

Cancer cachexia has no simple criteria to distinguish its severity in patients. Diagnostic criteria generally includes observing factors such as weight loss, fatigue, abnormal levels of albumin, reduced food intake and others. However, this study explored the cachexia staging score, a method of diagnosing cancer cachexia severity. This score explores strength, walking, rising from a chair, climbing up stairs and how often the patients fall. This allows clinicians to understand the patient’s muscle function. In this study, the cachexia staging score was testing in patients with advanced cancer who are receiving palliative care, to assess its usefulness in these patients. Here, the cachexia staging score was excellent at predicting life expectancy in the patients with advancing cancer receiving palliative care, and was able to classify patients according to their different stages of cachexia. This review by Ueshima J et al. aimed to assess whether the cachexia staging score could be applied to patients with advanced cancer under palliative care.

Key learnings Although the cachexia staging score holds great potential with its power to determine the prognosis and stage of cachexia in cancer patients, larger and multi-centre studies will be needed to confirm the benefits of using this technique.

Reviewed by: Z. Beketova

Authors: Ueshima J, Maeda K, Shimizu A, et al.

Published in: Nutrition 2022