Malnutrition and nutritional therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective Malnutrition commonly appears in patients of hepatocellular carcinoma.Severe malnutrition contributes to raising the risk of therapy-associated side effects and mortality,decreasing the efficacy of anticancer treatments and increasing the length of hospital stay.This paper introduced the causes of hepatocellular carcinoma-related malnutrition and the nutritional therapies of hepatocellular carcinoma to provide guide for its use in clinic.Methods Using "hepatocellular carcinoma", "malnutrition" and "nutritional therapy" to search the literatures in the CNKI and PubMed.Then summarizing the causes of hepatocellular carcinomarelated malnutrition and the nutritional therapies.Results The damage of liver cell,anorexia,metabolism and assimilation are the main causes of hepatocellular carcinoma-related malnutrition.And the therapeutic effect varies with the clinical status and cancer therapies.Conclusions The causes for hepatocellular carcinoma-related malnutrition are multifarious and the choices of scientific and efficient nutritional therapies should be in accordance with the patient status.