Clelia Madeddu,Cristina Moreno ,Francisco J López- Soriano,Josep M. Argilés,Marta Castillejo ,Roberto Serpe,Sílvia Busquets,
CASC-IN: A New Tool to Diagnose Pre-Cachexia in Cancer Patients
Annals of Clinical Oncology
2019
2674-3248
http://dx.doi.org/10.31487/j.ACO.2019.04.03
https://www.sciencerepository.org/casc-in-a-new-tool-to-diagnose-pre-cachexia-in-cancer-patients_ACO-2019-4-103 
Abstract: Purpose: The CASC-IN score has been designed with two very clear objectives: first, as a means to
quantitatively assess pre-cachexia in cancer patients, and second, as a tool to discriminate the patients where
cachexia staging is relevant. From this point of view, the CASC-IN tool is tightly linked with the so-called
CAchexia SCOre (CASCO) previously described1
and validated2 by our research team. The results
presented here classify a population of cancer patients into non-cachectic, precachectic or cachectic.
Patients and Methods: An observational prospective case-control study has been performed and a total of
179 carcinoma patients and 117 age-matched control subjects were included. All the participants in the
study were recruited at the Department of Medical Oncology (University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy) from
June 2011 to September 2014. 179.
Results: Using the mentioned patient's groups in the cancer group, --patients affected by a different tumour
types-- the frequencies observed have been non-cachectic: 58 (32.4%), pre-cachectic: 7 (3.9%) and
cachectic: 114 (63.7%).
Conclusion: It is concluded that CASC-IN can be satisfactorily used for both assessing cachectic and precachectic cancer patients. It constitutes the only available tool for the classification of pre-cachectic patients.Keywords: Pre-cachexia, wasting, anorexia, weight loss, physical performance, quality of life, classification, score