The Impact of a Home Delivered Meal Service in Cancer Patients During Chemotherapy

October 8, 2020 updated by: Radboud University Medical Center

The Impact of FoodforCare at Home on Quality of Life of Cancer Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy.

Cancer patients receiving treatment such as chemotherapy experience a variety of symptoms that interfere with their appetite and their ability to eat and enjoy meals. Therefore, adapting meals in a way that responds to these symptoms might be a good strategy to improve patient satisfaction, nutritional status and hence, quality of life. In this vein, the investigators hypothesize that meals from FoodforCare at Home will contribute to the quality of life of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy when compared to usual care.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Cancer patients receiving treatment such as chemotherapy experience a variety of symptoms that interfere with their appetite and their ability to eat and enjoy meals. Several studies suggest that nutritional intake increases when the patient is satisfied about the quality of the meals. Therefore, adapting meals in a way that responds to these symptoms might be a good strategy to improve patient satisfaction, nutritional status and hence, quality of life. In this vein, the investigators hypothesize that meals from FoodforCare at Home will contribute to the quality of life of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy when compared to usual care. Also, the investigators expect that this strategy will have a positive effect on patient satisfaction, other nutrition-related issues, including nausea and vomiting, on nutritional intake per se and hence, on the nutritional status. Additional benefits might include reduced use of medication, especially anti-emetics.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

148

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Netherlands
    • Gelderland
      • Nijmegen, Gelderland, Netherlands, 6525 GA
        • Radboudumc

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • age 18 years or older
  • diagnosed with cancer
  • receiving chemotherapy according to a minimum schedule of every 2 weeks
  • living within a 40 km radius around the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre
  • written informed consent

Exclusion Criteria:

  • renal insufficiency (MDRD-GFR (glomerular filtration rate) < 60ml/min and/or proteinuria)*
  • dementia or any other condition which makes it impossible to fill out questionnaires correctly
  • unable to understand or speak Dutch
  • depending on artificial nutrition in the form of Oral Nutritional Supplements, tube feeding or total parenteral nutrition

  • swallowing or passage problems

    • proteinuria is defined in case of a protein creatinine ratio > 0.5g/10mmol or an albuminuria > 300mg/day. This is checked by default before the start of chemotherapy by the treating physician to decide whether or not the patient is eligible for receiving chemotherapy.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: FoodforCare group
The intervention group will receive meals from FoodforCare at Home. The FoodforCare at Home concept consists of five to six small protein and energy enriched meals that will be delivered twice a week. After an individual intake, the composition of the dishes will be tailored to the needs of the patient in terms of composition, diet, taste, flavor and portion size. Besides the meals, patients in the intervention group will also receive an information leaflet about the importance of protein during treatment and how to reach their protein requirements.
Other: FoodforCare at home
Five small protein rich meals that will be delivered twice a week for 3 weeks.
No Intervention: Usual care group
The control group will continue their usual diet for 3 weeks and have no restrictions to their diet.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Quality of life and overall health status
Time Frame: 3.5 months
EORTC-Quality of Life-C30 questionnaire filled in before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and after chemotherapy. This questionnaire consists of 30 questions and a total score ranging from 0-100 is calculated based on these questions. The higher the score, the higher the quality of life of the patient.
3.5 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Nutritional intake
Time Frame: 3.5 months
2-day food diary filled in before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and after chemotherapy.
3.5 months
Muscle strength
Time Frame: 3.5 months
Hand grip strength (kg) performed before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and once after chemotherapy.
3.5 months
Nutritional status
Time Frame: 3.5 months
Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) performed before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and once after chemotherapy.
3.5 months
Functional score
Time Frame: 3.5 months
Karnofsky scale performed before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and once after chemotherapy. This status is based on 11 levels and ranges from 0, indicating death, to 100, indicating no complaints or evidence of disease.
3.5 months
Quality of life caregiver
Time Frame: 3.5 months
Caregiver Reaction Assessment (CRA) filled in before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and once after chemotherapy. This questionnaire consist of 24 items in five subscales. All items are statements with a 5-point Likert scale (completely disagree-completely agree). All subscale scores are the average of the item scores, ranging from 1 to 5. There is no total score.
3.5 months
Medication use
Time Frame: 3 weeks
Diary filled in during 3 weeks between 2 cycles of chemotherapy
3 weeks
Symptoms
Time Frame: 3 weeks
Symptom diary filled in during 3 weeks between 2 cycles of chemotherapy
3 weeks
Patient satisfaction
Time Frame: 1 day
Questionnaire filled in after 3 weeks of receiving meals. This is a self-developed questionnaire which does not have a total score. Each question will be analyzed separately. Questions consist of grading from 0-10 (the higher, the better the outcome) or with a 5-point Likert scale (completely disagree-completely agree).
1 day
Functional status
Time Frame: 3.5 months
Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) performed before chemotherapy, two times during chemotherapy and once after chemotherapy.
3.5 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Radboud University Medical Center

Investigators

  • Study Chair: Manon van den Berg, PhD, Radboud University Medical Center

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

November 17, 2017

Primary Completion (Actual)

May 22, 2020

Study Completion (Actual)

May 22, 2020

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

November 23, 2017

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 18, 2017

First Posted (Actual)

December 22, 2017

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

October 9, 2020

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 8, 2020

Last Verified

April 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2016-3044

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

No

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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