Specialized nutrition support: patterns of care

A prospectively studied series of 1072 patients who received specialized nutritional support are presented to evaluate the patterns of such care in a large nonuniversity teaching center. Age, service, materials used, routes of administration, complications, assessment parameters, duration of treatment, diagnoses, and survival statistics are presented. Such patterns are considered to be of importance to medical scientists, basic researchers, hospital administrators, governmental agencies, and members of the health care insurance industry.