Introduction: Cervical cancer ranks fourth most common diagnosed cancer in women worldwide and fourth leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Serum albumin is closely correlated with degree of malnutrition and is simple marker of nutrition status.

Material and Methods: Sixty patients of carcinoma cervix were assessed for nutritional status at time of presentation, at the end of treatment and three months after completion of treatment.

Results: Before treatment, 5% patients were having hypoalbuminemia and 95% were having normal serum albumin levels. At the end treatment, 35% patients had hypoalbuminemia and 65% patients had normal serum albumin levels. At third month follow up, 18.3% had hypoalbuminemia and 81.7% had normal serum albumin levels. Mean values of serum albumin before treatment, at the end of treatment and at third month of follow up were 4.07, 3.53 and 3.63 respectively. Repeated measure ANOVA test was applied and difference in means is found to be statistically significant with p-value < 0.001.

Conclusion: Pretreatment serum albumin can be used as a prognostic factor in cervical cancer patients. Low levels of serum albumin are associated with poor outcome in cancer patients, perhaps serum albumin can be used as an independent indicator of the need for aggressive nutrition intervention.

Keywords: carcinoma cervix; serum albumin; nutritional assessment.

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Anjali Bhola