Home parenteral nutrition for people with inoperable malignant bowel obstruction

• Sowerbutts AM, Lal S, Sremanakova J, et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2018;8:CD012812.

A Cochrane review evaluated the effect of home parenteral nutrition on survival and quality of life in patients with inoperable malignant bowel obstruction. Thirteen studies (which included a total of 721 participants) were included; all studies were cohort studies or case series. The risk of bias of all included studies was high. Meta-analysis was not possible due to heterogeneity of the data from the included studies. The median survival in the included studies was from 15 days to 155 days (the total range in all studies was 3–1278 days). Only four studies reported on quality of life measures and these gave mixed results. The authors concluded that it was uncertain whether home parenteral nutrition had an impact on survival or quality of life as the quality of …