Metabolism
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Weight loss in a patient with advanced cancer
AB is an 80 year old man who has metastatic cancer of the pancreas. He is 170 cm tall, and weighs 49 kg. He has lost 2 kg in body weight over the last 4 weeks - the condition of cancer cachexia.
What is his body mass index, and how would you classify it?
height ^2 = 1.7 x 1.7 = 2.89
BMI = weight / (height m^2) = 49 / 2.89 = 16.96
He is undernourished
His mean skinfold thickness is 1.9 mm, suggesting that he has negligible reserves of adipose tissue, and he shows considerable wasting of muscle, so we can assume that most of his weight loss is muscle.
The composition of muscle is:
79% water
17% protein (at 17 kJ /gram)
3% fat (at 37 kJ /gram)