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Functional Parameters of Nutrition

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Cachexia and Wasting: A Modern Approach

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Abstract

Functional assessment is at the heart of understanding how a chronic disease and its therapy impact on patients. It puts into tangible terms what the patient is capable of and brings an understandable ‘human context’ to the patient burden. Functional status can be a prognostic indicator. It may also have a role in treatment selection for individual patients and be used to enter and stratify patients in clinical trials. It remains to be seen whether it will be possible and practical to use end-points such as function (and other related end-points such as ‘quality of life’) to direct individual patient management. Using cancer cachexia as a paradigm, this chapter sets out to discuss some of the broader issues in functional patient assessment. New approaches to assessing function and preliminary experience with an emerging technology are also presented.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical and Surgical Sciences (Surgery), The University of Edinburgh, Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, UK

    Max Dahele & Kenneth C. H. Fearon

Authors
  1. Max Dahele
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  2. Kenneth C. H. Fearon
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Oncology, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Giovanni Mantovani

  2. Department of Clinical Cardiology, Imperial College, NHLI, London, UK

    Stefan D. Anker

  3. Department of Cardiology Charité, Applied Cachexia Research, Campus Virchow-Klinikum, Berlin, Germany

    Stefan D. Anker

  4. Department of Behavioral Medicine, Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Kagoshima, Japan

    Akio Inui

  5. GRECC, VA Medical Center and Division of Geriatric Medicine, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    John E. Morley

  6. Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Rome, La Sapienza, Rome, Italy

    Filippo Rossi Fanelli

  7. Department of Infectious Diseases, IRCCS S.Matteo Polyclinic, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Daniele Scevola

  8. Bone Marrow and Blood Stem Cell Transplantation Program, Center for Lymphoma and Myeloma, New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    Michael W. Schuster

  9. Department of Medicine-Geriatrics, University of New York at Stony Brook VAMC, Northport, NY, USA

    Shing-Shing Yeh

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Italia

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Dahele, M., Fearon, K.C.H. (2006). Functional Parameters of Nutrition. In: Mantovani, G., et al. Cachexia and Wasting: A Modern Approach. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-0552-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-0552-5_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Milano

  • Print ISBN: 978-88-470-0471-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-88-470-0552-5

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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