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Most studies supported the positive influence of enteral nutrition on the quality of life, either assessed based on the psychological measures of the quality of life or by considering the other potential determinants (e.g., malnutrition, complications, etc.). Taking this into account, enteral nutrition should be applied whenever possible, both to prevent and treat malnutrition in cancer patients. However, considering the limited number of studies conducted so far, further research conducted in homogenic populations of patients is necessary.
Due to an increase in the effectiveness of anti-cancer treatment [22] and an increase in life expectancy in cancer patients [23], the long-term complications will probably be observed more often, resulting in increasing role of the quality of life [24]. Taking this into account, it must be emphasized that the systematic review by Lis et al. [25], assessing the role of nutritional status in predicting quality of life in cancer individuals, indicated that correcting malnutrition may improve quality of life in cancer patients.
In agreement with the indicated association between nutritional status and quality of life, the ESPEN, within its recent practical guidelines [26] recommended applying nutritional support, including dietary advice, oral nutrition supplements, and enteral and parenteral nutrition as an effective way of improving nutritional status and malnutrition prevention. However, while choosing the method of nutritional support, it is indicated that, despite nutritional interventions, enteral nutrition should be recommended if oral nutrition remains inadequate, and parenteral nutrition should be recommended if enteral nutrition is not sufficient or feasible [26].
There are beneficial effects of enteral nutrition for cancer patients in the area of quality of life. While comparing patients treated with and without enteral nutrition, it was stated that enteral nutrition has a beneficial effect on the quality of life in a majority of studies, confirmed in groups of head and neck cancer patients [27][28][29], upper gastrointestinal tract cancer patients [30][31][32], and ovarian cancer patients [33]. At the same time, the results were not so consistent while comparing patients treated with enteral and parenteral nutrition; depending on the study, the various results were observed [34][35][36], but generally combined enteral and parenteral nutrition was stated to be superior to both enteral [36] and parenteral nutrition alone [35]. The indicated observations are in agreement with the recommendations by ESPEN [26], indicating the need to meet the energy requirements of patients, which must be considered the overall objective.
In spite of the fact that the majority of studies concluded the beneficial role of enteral nutrition (especially while compared with no nutritional support), some disadvantages or contradictory results are also indicated. Such observations were formulated mainly within studies assessing the effect of prophylactic enteral nutrition, applied, not when necessary, but earlier, in order to limit the risk of malnutrition [37][38][39]. This may result from the fact that the enteral nutrition procedure itself can generate complications [40]. As such complications may indirectly affect the quality of life, each of them needs to be considered while choosing the best option for nutritional support.
While the quality of life is linked to the stage of cancer [41], the prognosis [42], malnutrition [43], and applied therapy [44], enteral nutrition must also be taken into account as a factor indirectly affecting it by improving the effectiveness of cancer therapy [45] and reducing the risk of malnutrition [46].