DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i06.028

Pages: 2179-2187

Cancer is reported to be the second and third leading cause of all deaths in both developed and developing countries respectively. In Libya as well cancer is the second leading cause of all deaths. The purpose of this paper is to identify the nutritional status of female breast cancer patients in Benghazi city of Libya via cross-sectional study using Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG‐SGA) was carried out on 145 female cancer patients. Only 1.5 % of the subjects were well nourished. 25% of the studied females were severely malnourished; while 73.5 % were either at risk of malnutrition or suspected to develop malnutrition in the future. The mean age of the subjects’ ±SD was 50.8 + 13.5. Living arrangement, income, physical activity levels and body mass index were associated with nutritional status (P < 0.05). All sections of the PG-SGA has a significant statistical positive correlation with its total score (r = 0.54 – 0.93, p < 0.05).It is recommended that public health nutritionists should play a more significant and participatory role in cancer patients health care team. The prevalent malnutrition among breast cancer patients in Benghazi needs a critical intervention from governmental and private sectors. The PG-SGA is a quick, valid highly specific and sensitive nutritional assessment tool that not only allows patients to be identified both the risk as well as actual presence of malnutrition.