Meeting the nutritional needs of elderly cancer patients

nutritional needs elderly cancer patients food vegetables apple

Although it is described as “one of society’s greatest achievements,” with the aging population, cancer incidence is expected to accelerate rapidly, as 50% of cancer occurs within this age group.(1)

Nutrition therapy is a crucial component of cancer care. Early and continuous nutrition management is necessary to avoid malnutrition, as this is associated with poor clinical outcomes.(2) Often, the elderly already face chronic comorbid conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, kidney disease, bone disease and arthritis, further complicating their care.(3) (more…)

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Nutritional Supplements

BY: NANCY MORGAN, RN, BSN, MBA, WOCN, WCC, CWCMS, DWC
Wound healing and nutrition go hand in hand. Without adequate fluids, calories, and protein, wound healing can be delayed.

Protein is extremely important in wound healing. Patients with wounds require almost double the protein intake (1.2 to 1.5 g/kg/day) of those without wounds. All stages of wound healing require adequate protein. The basis of the human body structure, protein is responsible for making enzymes involved in wound healing, cell multiplication, and collagen and connective-tissue building. (more…)

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Nutritional considerations in patients with pressure ulcers

Optimizing nutritional status is a key strategy both in preventing and managing pressure ulcers. In patients across all care settings, compromised nutrition— as from poor intake, undesired weight loss, and malnutrition—increases the risk of pressure ulcers. It contributes to altered immune function, impaired collagen synthesis, and decreased tensile strength. In many cases, malnutrition also contributes to wound chronicity and increases the risk for delayed and impaired wound healing. In patients with chronic wounds, such as pressure ulcers, a chronic inflammatory state can induce catabolic metabolism, malnutrition, and dehydration. (more…)

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Clinician Resources: Nutrition, Treatment Algorithms, Pressure Ulcer Prevention

Check out these resources for your practice.

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Be a nutrition champion

One in three patients enters a hospital malnourished. Fight malnutrition by viewing six short videos from the Alliance to Advance Patient Nutrition, including “Rapidly Implement Nutrition Interventions” and “Recognize and Diagnose All Patients at Risk of Malnutrition.” The videos show how to collaborate with the care team to become champions of nutrition and help improve patient outcomes. Watch the videos online or download them for later viewing. (more…)

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Clinician Resources: Nutrition, Workplace Violence, Pressure Injuries

Learn about resources useful to your practice.

Nutrition and pressure ulcers

Advances in Skin & Wound Care has published “The role of nutrition for pressure ulcer management: National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel, European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel, and Pan Pacific Pressure Injury Alliance White Paper.” The white paper includes evidence-based nutrition strategies for preventing and managing pressure ulcers. (more…)

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Clinician Resources: On the Road Again, Nutrition, Compression

A variety of resources to end the year and take you into 2014.

On the road again

Give your patients with an ostomy this information from the Transportation Security Administration to help them navigate airport screening:

• You can be screened without having to empty or expose your ostomy, but you need to let the officer conducting the screening know about the ostomy before the screening starts.
• You can be screened using imaging technology, a metal detector, or a thorough patdown.
• Your ostomy is subject to additional screening. In most cases, this means you will pat down your ostomy and then your hands will undergo explosive trace detection. (more…)

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Hope for first drug against lymphedema

lymphedema drug against breast cancer medicine wca

Many cancer patients, especially those who’ve undergone breast cancer treatment, experience painful, swollen limbs, a condition called lymphedema.

Now researchers say they’ve found an underlying mechanism that could eventually lead to the first drug therapy for the debilitating condition. (more…)

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Antibiotic use in pressure injury infections

antibiotic overuse pressure injury infection

Antibiotic overuse contributes to the problems of antibiotic resistance and healthcare acquired infections, such as Clostridium difficile. Antibiotic stewardship programs improve patient outcomes, reduce antimicrobial resistance, and save money. These programs are designed to ensure patients receive the right antibiotic, at the right dose, at the right time, and for the right duration. (more…)

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Think a Patient Has Rights? They Left.

Patient Rights

by Dr. Michael Miller

There are few absolutes in my universe. I know that my youngest daughter will gleefully and with full malice (but humorously presented) find something to torment me about every time I see her; referrals from family practice docs arrive well marinated in multiple antibiotics with nary a diagnosis in sight (save for the ubiquitous “infection”); and that regardless of what I recommend, offer, beg, plead, or cajole, that the patient has the complete and total power to make their decisions regarding their care and who provides it. Unless they are deemed by multiple authorities to be incapable of making a decision, until the appropriate paperwork or an emergency situation exists mandating immediate lifesaving action, the ball bounces squarely in their court…or so I thought. (more…)

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Help Me, Help Me, Help Me…next Tuesday

physicians

by Dr. Michael Miller

Health care providers are by nature an altruistic bunch.  I have the honor of interviewing potential entries to my beloved profession as part of the admissions process at the newest Osteopathic Medical School in Indiana, Marian University.  The process is unique in that it does not simply ask the age old questions of “Why you want to be a physician ?”, (“Because I want to do primary care in a rural area”).  No, our probing involves scenarios in which they have to look at a social situation, identify their thoughts, those of the opposing views and then cohesively demonstrate intelligence, confidence, logical thought processes and humanity…all in an 8 minute period repeated 7 times.  Their responses juxtaposed against what I see in my day to day always gives me pause to think about how the practice of medicine has been so perverted by the promotion of self abdication of responsibility.  The “let your government do it for you” mantras and newest politically correct definitions of disabled (encompassing everything from melancholia to dislike of red M and M’s) have resulted in a major paradigm shift in medicine.  Whereas, the hospitals once touted their ability to heal all manner of maladies, they now recognize their cost ineffectiveness, more detrimental than beneficial care (just check the nutritional parameters of anyone pre and post hospitalization) and the downright danger of going to one, unless you are a burgeoning superbug. (more…)

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