Hayashi N, Sato Y, Fujiwara Y, et al. - Findings demonstrate a negative link between cancer cachexia and prognosis in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) who underwent definitive chemoradiotherapy. In these cases, improvement in survival could be achieved through nutritional intervention during chemoradiotherapy.

• This study involved 192 head and neck cancer patients, and clinical results were compared between cachexia and non-cachexia cases in definitive and adjuvant chemoradiotherapy settings.

• Cachexia was present in 40 patients (20.8%).

• The cachexia group had significantly shorter overall survival (OS) in the definitive setting (3-year OS: 50.0% vs 88.5%), and poor prognostic factors revealed in the multivariate analysis included UICC stage IV, baseline albumin of < 4 and cachexia.

• However, cachexia lost significance in the adjuvant setting.