Association between Scored Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment and Skeletal Muscle Determined by Computed Tomography in Patients with Cervical Cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Myopenia is a significant problem in oncology patients and the use of reliable instruments for its identification in clinical practice is necessary.Objective: To evaluate the association between the Scored Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) and skeletal muscle (SM) measured by computed tomography (CT) in patients with cervical cancer.Methods: This is an observational, cross-sectional study which enrolled women with cervical cancer, over 20 years, who started treatment between January 2015 and September 2018. The ones who presented PG-SGA and imaging of CT with a maximum interval of 45 days between them were included. The SM index (SMI) was used to classify myopenia and a significance level of 5% was adopted.Results: According to the PG-SGA, malnutrition was found in 56% patients and 23% were classified with myopenia by CT. The PG-SGA parameters were significantly associated with the SMI. The cutoff points that best discriminated myopenia were the PG-SGA total score ≥ 10, muscle depletion ≥ 2.0, and physical examination score ≥ 2.0.Conclusion: The PG-SGA showed to be a useful and viable method that shows good association and correlation with the SMI.