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Dr. Pankaj Vashi
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VIDEO: Dr. Vashi - Nutrition Metabolic Support, Can You Recall A Patient You Helped With This?

Dr. Vashi shares a CTCA patient who needed nutrition metabolic support and how he was able to help.

Dr. Vashi:
There are many, many patients who have come to us in a very bad nutritional status. One patient that comes to my mind just recently with locally advanced rectal cancer that was treated very well, aggressively with radiation and chemotherapy. Unfortunately, his nutritional needs were not well met. By the time he came to us he was pretty much bedridden and had his muscle wasting to a point where he could not stand.

This is a patient who I knew very well initially that he is going to need aggressive intervention, especially in a patient with rectal cancer like this, we knew we had lot of treatments to offer, but unfortunately his nutritional status was so poor that unless we address that, and that’s basically what I tell a lot of my patients to make them understand the role of nutrition, it is an integrated program. I always give an example of a table with four legs and I said each leg is necessary for the table to be up there and whether it’s one it could be nutrition, one could be chemotherapy, one could be radiation therapy, surgery and we are just part of one of the treatments that is trying to keep you of that table up there. I think they understand when you explain to them.

This particular patient, he was having a lot of diarrhea and all from the treatment he had just finished at the other center from wherever he came in. Then we started him on aggressive parental nutrition and about two months into that this patient started getting physical therapy and again, that’s the whole beauty of our program. It’s the physical therapy who help us also, it’s just getting nutrition is not all the need yet. His wasting all so bad that he had food drop.

We worked with that with physical therapy and actually I had taken his picture, I still have them before and after and this is amazing story. He obviously consented for something like that but, this is where he did well, he got better, he got chemotherapy, he responded well and six to eight months later he was walking around the hospital and I have to say I almost didn’t recognize him and he came in and gave me a hug and said, “Dr. Vashi,” and I said, “Hi,” and then it took me a while to remember that he is the same guy and he said, “Doc, now is a good time to take another picture,” and so we took a picture and I still have it on my computer. So, this is kind of success story that keeps us going.

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