Oral nutritional supplements for cancer patients: who could benefit?

In patients with cancer, severe malnutrition is associated with increased morbidity and mortality, reduction of treatment efficacy, and increased length of hospital stay. In order to avoid this, therefore, early individualized dietary counselling is mandatory. In this situation, oral nutritional supplements should be proposed according to their immunonutritional effects and indications. Indeed, while preoperative oral immunonutrition for patients with gastrointestinal neoplasm is associated with a 50% decrease in postoperative complications, the use of dietary antioxidant supplements during conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy is controversial. In these conditions, continuing research on the use of concurrent supplemental antioxidants is warranted. As long as data about immunonutritional efficacy with randomized controlled trials is insufficient, then oral nutritional supplements without immune effects should be associated with dietary counselling.