Immunonutrition in the perioperative period of ovarian cancer: from molecular mechanism to clinical application

Ovarian cancer is a major disease that poses a serious threat to the life and health of women worldwide, exhibiting the highest mortality rate among all gynaecological tumours. Patients with ovarian cancer often experience malnutrition due to factors such as tumour-related nutritional depletion and stress responses resulting from surgery. This malnutrition status in turn increases complications, mortality, and economic burden; affects treatment efficacy and prognosis; and prolongs hospitalisation time. Therefore, patients with ovarian cancer should be monitored for malnutrition and provided with prompt, adequate nutritional support in addition to surgery. Arginine, glutamine, omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, probiotics, and multiple vitamins are the most widely studied immunonutrients. Moreover, patients with ovarian cancer require individualised nutritional support, with enteral and parenteral nutrition being the presently employed primary methods of nutritional support.