In June 2017, Joy Heimgartner, MS, RDN, CSO, LD, presented a poster of preliminary results from the ongoing pilot study examining the nutrition evolution of patients undergoing treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) at the annual meeting of the Multinational Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) in Washington, D.C.
This study is supported through a 2017 Innovation Award Grant from the Mayo Clinic Department of Medicine (Rochester, Minnesota, USA). The study follows patients from their diagnosis of AML through treatment (including those who undergo stem cell transplant) using the Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST) and Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) to compare degree and timing of nutritional risk. The PG-SGA is completed on an iPad using the Pt-Global app. The study utilizes dietetic interns who have received nutrition-focused physical assessment training as research assistants. The team at the Mayo Clinic hopes that the more detailed information provided through the scored PG-SGA will provide insight into why and when patients with AML are at greatest nutritional risk. This may lead to more targeted and timely nutrition interventions for this population in the future.