Nutritional support in cancer treatment.

The role of artificial nutritional support, ie, both intravenous and enteral nutrition by infusion of chemically defined nutrients, is considered adjunct to cancer treatment. Despite a vast body of literature reflecting numerous attempts to demonstrate a supportive role for nutrition, little benefit has actually been confirmed in controlled investigations regarding outcome and objective remission in progressive cachexia. However, the impact of nutritional support on quality of life has only been considered in a few preliminary attempts in cancer patients. We suggest that the lack of evidence in cancer treatment for a significant role of nutritional support in a general sense is probably explained both by inappropriately designed investigations and by the unrecognized fact that standard clinical nutrition is hampered by nutrition-related inefficiencies that have not been well described before. Improved understanding of such deficiencies and the development of more sophisticated regimens in line with "nutrition pharmacology" instead of plain feeding with calories and protein may change this fallacy in the near future.