Usefulness of a nutrition assessment system for parenteral/enteral nutrition therapy.

Since a nutrition support team (NST) began to work in our hospital in March, 2003, we constructed our original nutrition assessment system that supports the prescription formulation of total parenteral nutrition (TPN). However, in daily NST activities, the re-evaluation of this system became necessary because of a high incidence of enteral nutrition (EN) and marked revisions in the dietary reference intakes in Japanese (7th revision). Therefore, we improved this system and added a prescription formulation support function that is also applicable to EN, and also added a function that automatically calculates the necessary doses of nutrients that tend to become deficient in patients with decubituses. This new system allowed the selection/evaluation of EN solutions in a short time with consideration of the 7th revision, and readily identified deficient nutrients and their levels in decubitus patients. We used this system in patients with high-level malnutrition complicated by decubituses and observed certain treatment effects.