Esophageal cancer often leads to manifestations such as dysphagia, and your nutritional status may be poor. So, do you need nutritional support before undergoing endoscopic treatment?
Do I need nutritional support?
Those who can undergo endoscopic resection are usually early-stage esophageal cancer, and your preoperative diet is usually not too affected, and in principle, preoperative nutritional support is not needed. However, clinically there are some elderly people and patients with long-term malnutrition whose preoperative nutritional status may be very poor.
The healthcare provider will assess your nutritional status before treatment. Common methods include asking about your recent diet and weight changes, measuring body parameters that reflect nutritional status (such as arm muscle circumference, triceps skin folds, etc.), and taking blood tests (such as total lymphocyte count, albumin, prealbumin, serum transferrin levels, etc.).
How is nutritional support done?
If your doctor determines that your preoperative nutritional status is poor, you will need to be given some nutritional support in order to control infection and promote recovery of the postoperative organism. The whole principle and process is the same as the nutritional support before surgery.
Preoperative nutritional support often provides you with a full range of nutrients by oral or intravenous routes. The main modalities include enteral nutrition (EN) support and parenteral nutrition (PN) support.
Enteral nutrition is a form of nutritional support in which the body’s metabolic needs, as well as various other nutrients, are given through the gastrointestinal tract. It is administered orally and through catheters, including nasogastric, nasoduodenal, nasojejunal, and gastrojejunostomy tubes.
Parenteral nutrition is a form of nutritional support in which the body is given intravenously, mostly because the patient is unable to take in nutrients via the gastrointestinal tract or the nutrients taken in do not meet metabolic needs. When all nutrition is given parenterally, it is called total parenteral nutrition (TPN).
To learn more about enteral nutrition and parenteral nutrition, read: