Influencing factors of nutritional supplementation awareness in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy and analysis in importance matrix

Objective To analyze the influencing factors of nutritional supplementation awareness in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma undergoing concurrent radiochemotherapy and perform an importance matrix analysis.

Methods A total of 216 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma undergoing concurrent radiochemotherapy were selected as the study subjects. A questionnaire survey was conducted to assess patients' awareness of nutritional supplementation during radiochemotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and general patient information was collected. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to analyze the influencing factors of nutritional supplementation awareness in patients undergoing radiochemotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and an importance matrix analysis was performed for each factor.

Results At 2 months of radiochemotherapy, the hemoglobin and prealbumin levels of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma were lower than those before and 2 months after radiochemotherapy, while the nutrition status score and malnutrition incidence were higher than those before and 2 months after radiochemotherapy (P < 0.01). The questionnaire assessment showed that the total score of nutritional supplementation awareness among patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma was (37.44±6.10). Age, rural residence, avoidance coping, tumor stage, social support, education level and psychological resilience were the influencing factors of nutritional supplementation awareness in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (P < 0.05). Importance matrix analysis showed that avoidance coping, psychological resilience and social support were more important and had lower difficulty in improvement, were included the priority improvement area. Age, rural residence, tumor stage and education level had more difficulty in improvement, and were included in the suboptimal improvement area.

Conclusion The influencing factors of nutritional supplementation awareness in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma include rural residence, age, avoidance coping, education level, psychological resilience, tumor stage and social support. Clinical work should target these factors to improve patients′ nutritional cognition and behavior.