Biochemical methods in nutritional assessment.

The availability of methods for the nutritional therapy of hospital patients has caused clinicians to realize the need for reliable methods to select patients for such treatment. In the early years, following the introduction of the techniques of parenteral nutrition and enteral nutrition, the decision to use those therapies was mostly a clinical one. More recently attempts have been made to employ methods of nutritional assessment to select patients for therapy on the basis that they are ‘malnourished’. This paper is a critical discussion of the use of biochemical methods in the nutritional assessment of hospital patients.