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Altered food intake and taste perception in children with cancer after start of chemotherapy: perspectives of children, parents and nurses

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Abstract

Goals of work

The purpose of this study was to better understand various variables related to food intake and eating problems in children with cancer during their chemotherapy.

Patients and methods

Twenty-two consecutively admitted children, diagnosed with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, participated in this study. Twenty-one of them, their parents and attending nurses participated in semi-structured interviews. Ten of the children underwent a taste acuity test, and recognition thresholds for the four basic tastes were determined.

Main results

The shared view of both children and parents was that altered taste was the predominant cause of the eating problems. In contrast, the nurses perceived that nausea was the most important cause of the children’s eating problems. In addition, psychological aspects such as learned food aversions and negative attitudes towards hospital food were regarded as important by children, parents and nurses. The taste test showed that the patients had higher thresholds for bitter taste and made more taste recognition errors compared to controls.

Conclusions

Changes seem to exist both in the primary gustatory sense as well as in food perception in paediatric cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Single solutions, such as efforts to serve “tasty food”, do not suffice alone. A more effective solution may be to combine different strategies and combinations of oral, enteral and parenteral nutrition should be considered to prevent malnutrition.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financed by the Children’s Cancer Foundation in Sweden and by the Gunnar Nilsson Cancer Foundation. The authors wish to thank the patients, parents and staff at the Paediatric Haematology and Oncology Unit at Umeå University Hospital. Special thanks to Siv Inger Eliasson for the medical records’ review, Margareta Holmgren for carrying out the taste acuity tests and Lena Carling for providing the software program for the anthropometry analysis. We are indebted to Dr. Gregory Neely and Gareth Morgan for valuable comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Sciences, Paediatrics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Inger Skolin & Olle Hernell

  2. Department of Odontology, Paedodontics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Ylva Britt Wahlin

  3. Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Daniel A. Broman

  4. Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Ulla-Kaisa Koivisto Hursti

  5. Paediatric Haematology and Oncology Unit, Umeå University Hospital, Umeå, Sweden

    Marita Vikström Larsson

  6. LABMED 8100, Karolinska Institutet, 141 83, Huddinge, Sweden

    Inger Skolin

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  1. Inger Skolin
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  2. Ylva Britt Wahlin
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  3. Daniel A. Broman
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  4. Ulla-Kaisa Koivisto Hursti
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  5. Marita Vikström Larsson
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  6. Olle Hernell
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Correspondence to Inger Skolin.

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Skolin, I., Wahlin, Y.B., Broman, D.A. et al. Altered food intake and taste perception in children with cancer after start of chemotherapy: perspectives of children, parents and nurses. Support Care Cancer 14, 369–378 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-005-0904-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-005-0904-6

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