Elemental diet as an adjuvant for patients with locally advanced gastrointestinal cancer receiving radiation therapy: a prospectively randomized study.

Thirty patients with locally advanced, nonresectable, nonmetastatic cancer in the peripancreatic region, stomach and colorectum-anus, to be treated with radiation therapy with or without adjuvant chemotherapy, were randomized to receive standard diet and either usual between-meal feedings or 300 calories tid of a high nitrogen elemental diet. Although weight loss associated with radiation therapy was not significantly reduced in those receiving the nutritional supplement, delayed hypersensitivity skin test responses tended to improve in patients receiving the elemental dietary supplement and to deteriorate in controls. Planned radiation therapy was completed in all nutritionally supported patients. One control patient expired shortly after treatment was halted abruptly, and three other control patients required rescue by total parenteral nutrition.