The definition of cachexia is the physical wasting and malnutrition that come with late-stage cancer and other chronic diseases. Patients with advanced symptoms of lung cancer and of mesothelioma, often have trouble with eating, swallowing, and with pain, but the cancer is also causing them to miss important nutrients.
This malnutrition makes patients feel fatigued and weak. Anorexia—lack of appetite—can occur along with cachexia. Even cancer treatment itself can interfere with a patient’s ability to get enough protein and calories to help heal, fight infection, and maintain their energy.
Other symptoms that often occur with cachexia in lung cancer are difficulty breathing, pleural effusion (fluid in the lungs), and blood clots (thrombophlebitis).
Cancer cachexia
Malnutrition is most often associated with cancer cachexia. Cancer cachexia means patients gradually and continually lose weight, lose their appetites, and lose body mass because the malignancy is stealing nutrients.
Cancer cachexia can occur even when malignancies are yet undetected. The biggest indicator is the wasting away of muscles—even when nutrition seems adequate and even if a patient maintains a reasonable weight. Cachexia is a condition that actually changes the way the body processes food.
Some doctors have used insulin treatment or prescribe exercise to make the body demand its share of nutrients ahead of the tumor. But much more remains to be learned about cachexia.
Terminal cachexia
When patients with advanced symptoms of lung cancer or stomach or other cancers reach the point where medical treatment offers no further hope of cure, they are in terminal cachexia, the final stages of wasting in which care and cachexia treatment must become palliative. The hope is to give patients the best quality of life possible with their condition.
Cachexia treatment such as prescribed corticosteroids that seem to have a positive effect on some patients have so far not been long-lasting. Other approaches include various drugs that try to stimulate the patient's appetite and facilitate weight gain.