Ľubomír Skladaný
In the confusion which will have surrounded patient with malignant tumor after disclosing the diagnosis, questions concerning nutrition are among the most important for both the patient and his or her fellows. This offers unusual opportunity to build up doctor-patient-family relationship beyond boundaries of common communication. Other, no less important motives to become literate in the art of nutritional treatment (NT), are 1. overall prevalence of malnutrition in patients with malignancies; 2. degree to which malnutrition influences all aspects of prognosis; 3. potential of NT to attenuate or abolish negative impact of malnutrition, and 4. considerable reduction of overall treatment expenses whenever proper NT is executed. Nutritional intervention is part of a complex approach to oncological patient. The first line modality is enteral NT (ENT) with parenteral NT being complementary (additional to ENT) or alternative (replacing ENT) in cases of insufficiency or failure of enteral NT, respectively.