Clinical Impact of Nutrition and Inflammation Assessment Tools in Colorectal Cancer Treatment

For resectable colorectal cancer (CRC), the standard treatment is perioperative adjuvant treatment and complete resection. For unresectable CRC, the standard treatment is systemic chemotherapy. The detection of promising biomarkers is necessary for optimizing the management of CRC and improving patient survival. If physicians can detect useful biomarkers, patients with CRC may benefit from more aggressive or less toxic treatment. Recent studies have shown that the inflammatory and nutritional status both influence the short and long-term oncological outcomes of patients with CRC during perioperative and/or chemotherapy. The utility of several tools for the evaluation of the inflammation and nutritional status has been reported. The introduction of such tools in the management of CRC could have a beneficial impact on postoperative surgical complications or adverse events of chemotherapy. An understanding of the characteristics of each of these evaluations is necessary for their introduction in daily clinical practice. The present report summarizes the background and current status of nutrition and inflammation evaluation tools and future perspectives on their application in the management of patients with CRC.