Oral nutrition supplements do not minimize weight loss postgastrectomy

For patients who have undergone gastrectomy, use of oral nutrition supplements (ONS) for 12 weeks falls short of preventing further weight loss, according to a study. However, the weight lost over 1 year after surgery appears to be lower among those who took more than 200 kcal/day of the said supplements.

The multicentre, open-label study randomly assigned 1,003 gastric cancer patients undergoing curative gastrectomy to either the ONS group or the control group. In the former, patients were scheduled to receive 400 ml (400 kcal) per day of ONS for 12 weeks as enteral nutrition, with the actual intake amount documented daily by patients themselves.

A total of 880 patients (ONS 437, control 443) had available body weight loss (BWL) data.

Compared with the control group, the ONS group had significantly lower BWL at 3 months (7.1 and 8.5 percent; p=0.0011). This between-group difference gradually decreased at 6 months and was not significant at 1 year after surgery (9.3 percent and 9.8 percent; p=0.37).

In the ONS group, about half of the patients (50.4 percent) who took more than 200 ml of ONS (average, 301 ml) daily showed significantly less BWL (8.2 percent) at 1 year as compared with the control (p=0.0204).

BWL after gastrectomy may promote deterioration in quality of life and lead to a poor prognosis. ONS may be used to curb BWL, which is said to usually occur in the first 3 months after gastrectomy and becomes stable thereafter.