Nutritional assessment and screening for malnutrition.

Malnutrition can be detected in up to 50% of patients with gastrointestinal cancer. Although malnutrition reflects the severity of cancer, it is important to underline that anticancer treatments including surgery likely increase the severity of malnutrition. Additionally, malnutrition is associated with an increased risk of perioperative morbidity and mortality. Nutritional assessment should be a part of pre-treatment work up of gastrointestinal cancer patients because nutritional support has been shown to limit the negative impact of malnutrition on perioperative outcome. The objective of these practice guidelines is to address the following questions regarding nutritional screening in gastrointestinal cancer patients: who should benefit from nutritional assessment, when nutritional assessment should be proposed, how nutritional assessment should be carried out and why nutritional assessment is indicated.