[Adjuvant artificial nutrition in tumor surgery].

Malnutrition can effect negatively the results of major cancer surgery. Adequate preoperative nutritional therapy helps to overcome the catabolic situation of malnourished cancer patients and leads to a reduction of postoperative morbidity and mortality. The beneficial effect of nutritional therapy after major cancer surgery is generally accepted, despite there is a lack of comparative clinical trials which could support this opinion. Forced feeding stimulated tumor growth in certain animal models. These findings seem to have not any clinical relevance in cancer surgery.