Research paper
Effect of Early and Intensive Telephone or Electronic Nutrition Counselling Delivered to People with Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer on Quality of Life: A Three-Arm Randomised Controlled Trial
Study answer
What this study found
Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and overall survival over 12 months did not differ between intervention groups and usual care. Early, intensive nutrition counselling at home did not improve QoL or survival. Telephone-delivered counselling achieved earlier and more frequent nutrition contacts and showed some attenuation of weight loss compared with mobile-app delivery and control; asynchronous mobile-app delivery had higher withdrawals and lower acceptance. Implications: achieving nutritional adequacy in upper GI cancer may require a multidisciplinary approach beyond behavioural…
- Study & population
- Three-arm randomized controlled trial of adults newly diagnosed with upper GI cancer planning anticancer treatment, recruited from public and private health services in southeast Victoria, Australia (April 2017–July 2019).
- Key limitation
- Withdrawals were higher in the mobile-app group and missing data were more common there; generalisability limited to English-speaking adults in a Melbourne-area setting; recruitment was limited to one geographic area; some nutritional outcomes could not be fully captured (SF-PG-SGA in-person exam not feasible); not a…
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Open PDFOriginal abstract
Background: Delay in dietetic service provision for upper gastrointestinal cancer exacerbates disease-related malnutrition and consequently increases morbidity and mortality. Dietetic services are usually referral-based and provided face-to-face in i…