Anxiety, Depression and Quality of Life Improve After One Month and Three Months of Home Parenteral Nutrition: A Pilot Study in a Canadian Population

Safety and quality of parenteral nutrition: Areas for improvement and future perspectives

PURPOSE

This article is based on presentations and discussions held at the International Safety and Quality of Parenteral Nutrition (PN) Summit (held November 8-10, 2021, at Charleston, SC, and Bad Homburg, Germany) and aims to raise awareness concerning unresolved issues associated with the PN process and potential future directions, including a greater emphasis on patients' perspectives and the role of patient support.

SUMMARY

Ensuring that every patient in need receives adequate PN support remains challenging. It is important to have a standardized approach to identify nutritional risk and requirements using validated nutritional screening and assessment tools. Gaps between optimal and actual clinical practices need to be identified and closed, and responsibilities in the nutrition support team clarified. Use of modern technology opens up opportunities to decrease workloads or liberate resources, allowing a more personalized care approach. Patient-centered care has gained in importance and is an emerging topic within clinical nutrition, in part because patients often have different priorities and concerns than healthcare professionals. Regular assessment of health-related quality of life, functional outcomes, and/or overall patient well-being should all be performed for PN patients. This will generate patient-centric data, which should be integrated into care plans. Finally, communication and patient education are prerequisites for patients' commitment to health and for fostering adherence to PN regimes.

CONCLUSION

Moving closer to optimal nutritional care requires input from healthcare professionals and patients. Patient-centered care and greater emphasis on patient perspectives and priorities within clinical nutrition are essential to help further improve clinical nutrition.

A comparison of health-related quality of life in chronic intestinal failure and end-stage kidney disease: A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

There is inequal access to treatment and scarce evidence on how the disease burden in chronic intestinal failure (CIF) compares to other chronic nonmalignant types of organ failure. Therefore, we compared the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of people with CIF with that of people with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) receiving hemodialysis (HD). These groups were selected for comparison as they have similar treatment characteristics. We hypothesized that people treated with HD and people with CIF had similarly poor HRQOL.

METHODS

HRQOL was evaluated and compared in a cross-sectional study of adult people with CIF and people with ESKD HD at a tertiary hospital in Denmark, using the Short-Form 36 (SF-36).

RESULTS

One hundred forty-one people with CIF and 131 people with ESKD receiving HD were included in the analysis. Both groups reported low scores (<50) for HRQOL on general health, vitality, and role limitation-physical. People with ESKD receiving HD had significantly lower scores than people with CIF regarding physical functioning, general health, and vitality when adjusted for sex and age. No significant difference was found for any other SF-36 domain.

CONCLUSION

HRQOL was similarly and significantly reduced in people with CIF and in people with ESKD receiving HD. People with ESKD receiving HD had significantly poorer HRQOL than people with CIF in some aspects of physical and mental health. Access to home parenteral support treatment varies among countries that typically provide HD, suggesting an inequality in healthcare based on the type of organ failure.

Novel Therapeutic Approaches for Mitigating Complications in Short Bowel Syndrome

Short bowel syndrome (SBS) is a particularly serious condition in which the small intestine does not absorb sufficient nutrients for biological needs, resulting in severe illness and potentially death if not treated. Given the important role of the gut in many signaling cascades throughout the body, SBS results in disruption of many pathways and imbalances in various hormones. Due to the inability to meet sufficient nutritional needs, an intravenous form of nutrition, total parental nutrition (TPN), is administered. However, TPN presents difficulties such as severe liver injury and altered signaling secondary to the continued lack of luminal contents. This manuscript aims to summarize relevant studies into the systemic effects of TPN on systems such as the gut-brain, gut-lung, and gut-liver axis, as well as present novel therapeutics currently under use or investigation as mitigation strategies for TPN induced injury.

Benefit of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) and chemotherapy in patients with invasive lobular carcinoma developed peritoneal metastases

The benefit of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) for patients with malnutrition due to peritoneal metastasis depends on the type of cancer. During the period 1999-2020, we treated 460 patients with metastatic and stage 4 breast cancer, 23 of whom were invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC). Of the 23 patients with ILC, 13 (57%) developed peritoneal metastasis, and 11 died of progression of peritoneal metastasis. Among these 11 patients, 2 patients who underwent surgery due to bowel obstruction, had no improvement, and died 1-4 months after surgery. The prognosis of the other 7 patients under BSC alone was poor, survival time were ranging from 1 to 5 months. The remaining two patients who were able to continue outpatient chemotherapy under HPN were able to prolong their survival time by 18 months and 26 months, respectively. We need to recognize that HPN and chemotherapy may prolong survival time in patients with peritoneal metastasis of ILC, and determine the indication for HPN based on the non-peritoneal life-threatening metastasis, length of treatment, availability of support for HPN management and outpatient chemotherapy, and the patient's willingness to accept it.