CURRENT CONCEPTS IN CANCER - EFFECTS OF CANCER AND CANCER-TREATMENT ON THE NUTRITION OF THE HOST

THE growth of cancer in man leads to destruction of tissues and alterations of functions. The consequences of this process, culminating in overt cachexia and death, are so varied that cancer has replaced syphilis as the great imitator.1 Many of the manifestations of cachexia (weakness, anorexia, depletion and translocation of host component, and loss of immunocompetence) resemble malnutrition and are accountable for, in many patients, by poor nutritional intake, neoplastic invasion of the gastrointestinal tract or creation by the tumor of abnormal routes through which nutrients can be lost. The development of cachexia, nevertheless, bears no simple relation to caloric. © 1979, Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.