Avaliação da capacidade funcional de pacientes oncológicos atendidos ambulatorialmente em um hospital público na Cidade do Recife

Cancer is considered a chronic noncommunicable disease (CNCD) characterized by a cluster of cells that grow and divide uncontrollably. Functional capacity, however, involves the individual's ability to lead his life or self, and this is influenced by the degree of independence and autonomy of the person. The Eastern Cooperative Oncologic Group (ECOG) performance scale is an instrument capable of assessing how the disease affects the functional capacity of the patients. Therefore, the objective of the study was to evaluate the functional capacity of oncology patients treated ambulatorially. The present study is a sectional study carried out at the Barao de Lucena Public Hospital (HBL), located in the city of Recife-Pe. Participants in the study were individuals with a diagnosis of cancer of both sexes, older than 18 eighteen years. The data collected were related to sociodemographic variables, clinical evaluation, anthropometry and evaluation of functional capacity. Data were presented as frequencies, accompanied by their respective 95% confidence intervals (95% CI), and p <0.05 was used as statistical significance. The study was carried out with 65 individuals with mean age of 58.53 ± 12.66 years. Of the individuals studied (53.8%) were adults. The most prevalent type of cancer was breast (52.3%), and the most commonly used neoplastic treatment was chemotherapy (84.6%). Regarding the nutritional status, there was a greater relevance of overweight individuals (55.4%), taking into account the BMI parameter. On the other hand, there was a higher prevalence of malnutrition patients using the CMB criterion (83.1%). Regarding the functional capacity of the individuals studied, using the ECOG parameter, (61.5%) did not change. In the study, no associations were found between ECOG, anthropometric parameters and lifestyle. In summary, most of the evaluated patients did not present functional capacity alteration, probably due to the most prevalent type of cancer in the study, breast cancer, which is not usually characterized by reduction of indicators of general obesity. However, when assessing muscle mass indicators, a reduction is observed, which may infer the appearance of possible sarcopenic obesity in these patients.