Assessment of the Dietary Consumption and Nutritional Status of women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy

Introduction: Breast cancer is one of the neoplasias that most affect women worldwide. Overweight associated with the development of this neoplasia, is also related to poor prognosis in patients with breast cancer. Objective: To evaluate the dietary intake and the nutritional status of women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Methodology: Cross-sectional study model with 57 women. There were applied the Patient-generated Subjective Global Assessment, the 24-hour food recall, the structured questionnaire and the anthropometric evaluation. The dietary intake of macronutrients was compared to the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population and the vitamins and minerals according to the Dietary Reference Intakes. Statistic analysis was performed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 13.0. The variables were evaluated through the Student's t-test, the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test, and the Fischer's exact test. The adopted significance level was 5% (p<0.05). Results: The mean age was 53.9 (11,2) years; 79% were overweight, according to the Body Mass Index, and 86% with adequate nutritional status, according to the Patient-generated Subjective Global Assessment. The average consumption of 1.0 ng of vitamin D and of E vitamin (7.4 mg), selenium (0.1 ng), carbohydrates (54.6%), fiber (14.4 g) under the recommended by the Dietary Reference Intakes and by the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population. Conclusion: There is concluded that most of the participants showed overweight. The consumption of vitamin A, D, E, selenium, and fiber, was under the recommended.