Radiotherapy can cause esophageal mucosal edema, leading to dysphagia, which severely affects patient feeding and subsequently leads to malnutrition.
If you have problems swallowing during radiation therapy, try the following:
- Eat a semi-liquid diet. Semi-liquid foods are thinner and softer, easier to swallow, and more complete and nutritious than clear fluids. Semi-liquid foods include: rice paste, lotus root powder, batter (a kind of pancake made of flour, egg, and a little chopped green onion), lump soup, tender egg custard, yogurt, milkshake, meat or fish puree, and fruit and vegetable puree.
- Eat small, frequent meals, several times a day, 10 to 15 cups of liquid food per day.
- Purge rice porridge, eggs, lean meat, fruits and vegetables in a blender or wall-breaker to make a puree or homogenized meal. The details of the homogenized meal will be described later.
- Starch, flour, rice paste, and thickeners can be used to adjust the consistency of a liquid meal to a consistency that is easy to swallow. Among them, thickener is a food additive that is mainly used to improve and increase the consistency of food. Commonly used thickeners are usually “natural products”, mostly derived from natural foods. For example, agar and carrageenan are extracts of seaweed; gelatin is hydrolyzed from the skin or bones of animals; and the main source of pectin is the residue of orange peel and apple juice. Thickeners are available at self-pay pharmacies in some hospitals.
- If you cannot consume enough food to meet your needs, you can supplement your dietary intake with a high-calorie, high-protein formula for special medical purposes (enteral nutrition preparation) by mouth.
Examples of homogenized meal preparation methods:
A homogenized meal is one in which all of the food for each meal is added to a cooking machine and beaten into a homogenized paste for patients who have temporary swallowing difficulties after surgery or radiation therapy. Here is a recipe for a common homogenized meal:
Ingredients:
Rice 25 g, barley 25 g, add water and cook to make rice; add maltodextrin 25 g and set aside.
1 hard-boiled egg, peeled, set aside.
Chicken breast or pork tenderloin 50 g, cooked in boiling water for 5 minutes, set aside.
Tender leafy greens 100 g, blanched in boiling water for 1 minute, either spinach, cabbage, or young cabbage leaves;
Fruit 100 g, chopped, set aside.
Vegetable oil 15 g (camellia oil, olive oil, flax oil), salt 2 g, protein powder 20 g (about 2 tablespoons), set aside.
Preparation and serving:
Put all the above ingredients into a cooking machine with 750 ml of warm water and blend on high speed to make a homogenized meal.
Before each dose, add 2 capsules of digestive enzymes, divided into 3 doses, to be pushed through the enteral nutrition tube or taken orally.
Nutrients:
About 750 kcal, 45 g protein, 1000 ml fluid volume.
Based on the above homogenized meal, adding 100 ml of yogurt daily, the total daily intake of calories is about 750 kcal, protein 45 g, and fluid volume 1200 ml. but this is not enough, it is recommended to add 3 enteral nutrition preparations between the 3 homogenized meals, totaling 750 ml, and drink warm water 1000 ml. this will achieve the target amount of energy 1500 kcal, protein 25 g, and fluid volume 1000 ml. The target amount of 25 g of protein is basically sufficient to meet the daily nutritional requirements of a medium-sized (165 cm) patient.
Cautions:
Take care of hygiene during operation and sterilize all instruments.
The finished homogenized meal can be tube fed in 2-3 times throughout the day. If you can’t finish it, you can put it in the refrigerator at 0~4 degrees and finish it within 10 hours.
If weight loss continues, increase the amount of special medical food by 250-500 ml daily and adjust the amount according to weight change.