The purposes of this study are to evaluate clinical characteristics of malnourished patients who received nutritional therapy and to compare their clinical courses according to nutritional support team (NST) consultation in tertiary referral hospital in Korea.
From June 2014 to May 2015, 43,954 admitted patients who were more than 18 years old were retrospectively investigated. Characteristics of patients who received enteral nutrition (EN) or parenteral nutrition (PN) for more than 3 days (nutritional therapy group) were compared to the patients without nutritional therapy (control group). In addition, clinical courses according to NST consultation (NST group and non-NST group) were compared through propensity score matching (PSM).
EN or PN was applied in 4,599 patients for more than 3 days (nutritional therapy group: 10.5%). For characteristics, there were significant differences between two groups (nutritional therapy group
In tertiary referral hospital in Korea, more than 10% of patients still needed active nutritional therapy. NST consultation rate varies among departments. We failed to find significant differences between NST group and non-NST group.