Impact of Oral Care Protocol on the Oral SAFETY & Nutritional Status of Lung-Cancer Patients under Anticancer Chemotherapy

Purpose: This Research intends to apply oral care protocol including preventative nursing intervention for lung cancer patients under anticancer chemotherapy to find its effects on oral safety and nutrition status. Methods: This Research employs one-group pre-post design intended to find out the impacts of oral care protocol on the oral safety and nutrition status of lung cancer patients under anticancer chemotherapy. Pre-investigation was conducted on the subjects twice at 4-week interval, and post-investigation was conducted once 4 weeks after the oral care protocol was applied. The Oral Assessment Guide(OAG) was used to determine objective aspects of oral safety. The Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment(PGSGA), aspects of nutrition status. For collected data, frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation and Repeated Measures ANOVA were con-ducted using SPSS 20.0. Results: The major findings of this study were as follows. 1)The OAG score of participants to which an oral care protocol was applied(F=4.085, p=.022) showed significant difference by measurement times. 2)The Nutrition status of participants to which an oral care protocol was applied showed a relation by measurement times. For PGSGA score(F=7.498, p=.003), there were significant difference by measurement times. Conclusion: The finding of this study gives a useful information for the strategies of improving oral safety and nutrition as performing oral care protocol