[Nutrition Support as Team Medical Care]

Nutrition support is important to prevent complicating disorders such as infections and decubitus and to improve patient outcomes. The nutrition support team (NST), which is usually composed of a physician, nurse, nutritionist, clinical laboratory technician, pharmacist, and office worker, is effective for preventing complications and reducing costs for hospitalized patients. To screen for malnutrition in an early phase, biochemical markers are useful. Transthyretin (TTR) is a serum protein synthesized mainly by the liver. TTR has a short half-life in the bloodstream of 2 days, and is often used as a rapid and sensitive marker of malnutrition. However, TTR also decreases under inflammatory and infectious conditions. We recently established the Kumamoto Index to assess both the inflammatory and nutritional state of patients.