Cancer-associated anorexia: Validity and performance overtime of different appetite tools among patients at their first cancer diagnosis.

Summary Background & Aims Anorexia is a frequent symptom in cancer and we aimed to assess its prevalence among patients at their first cancer diagnosis by different appetite tools and the relationship between each tool with self-reports of food intake. We also tested whether cancer anorexia influences outcomes independently of reduced food intake or body weight loss (BWL) overtime and whether BWL was associated with complications during anticancer-therapy. Methods Functional Assessment of Anorexia/Cachexia Therapy (FAACT) score, self-assessment of appetite, Anorexia Questionnaire (AQ) and visual analog scale (VAS) were administered. Percent food intake was used as a criterion measure of anorexia. We registered BWL and anticancer-therapy complications over 3-month-follow-up. Results 438 cancer patients from 7 cancer-centers worldwide were included. The prevalence of anorexia was 39.9% by FAACT- A/CS score, 40.2% by VAS, 40.6% by the self-assessment of appetite and 65.4% by AQ. Low food intake (≤50%) was reported in 28% of patients. All appetite tools correlated with food intake percent (P Conclusions In our sample of cancer patients, FAACT score and self-assessment of appetite performed well when low food intake was used as a criterion measure, and revealed an association of anorexia with BWL, which was, in turn, related to the development of anticancer-therapy complications.