Challenges and Efficacy of a Clinical Nutrition Support Team

Ernährungsteams sind Einrichtungen in Krankenhäusern, die sowohl für den fachgerechten Einsatz von enteralen und parenteralen stationären Ernährungstherapien als auch für die Beratung zur ambulanten Ernährung zuständig sind. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird näher auf die Organisation, die Zusammensetzung, die Aufgaben und Herausforderungen eines klinischen Ernährungsteams betreffend Patienten-Outcome und Kosten eingegangen.Many patients are malnourished at hospital admission. This condition further worsens improve during the hospitalisation. Malnutrition itself prolongs the length of hospital stay and the rehabilitation time, increases complication rates, morbidity, and mortality. Prompt reaction is needed to prevent these negative consequences, to maximise the success of therapy and to offer patients a better quality of life and a maintained autonomy. The early recognition of a poor nutritional status is therefore indispensable to initiate an efficient and timely nutritional therapy, according to individual needs. Multidisciplinary knowledge is needed to avoid potential complications as well as clearly defined responsibilities and structured processes. Thus, inter- and multiprofessional efforts clinical nutrition support teams have been created since the 70ies, mainly in the larger hospitals, to manage nutritional therapies. The main task of a clinical nutrition support team is to detect the risk for malnutrition, to prevent malnutrition by targeted measures and, when appropriate, to adequately treat it quickest possible. In the following, we will provide more details about organisation, composition, tasks, challenges of clinical nutrition support teams as wells as efficacy regarding patients’ outcome and briefly about costs