Can nutritional criteria help predict outcome in hospitalized patients?

The following nutritional criteria were evaluated for their usefulness in predicting outcome in a prospective study of 66 randomly selected hospitalized patients with a variety of diagnoses: total protein, albumin, and transferrin concentrations in serum, creatinine height index, weight height index, phenylalanine/tyrosine ratio (Phe/Tyr), concentration of branched-chain amino acids in serum, and ratio of essential to nonessential amino acids in serum. The cases were followed from admission to discharge, and were classified into the following three groups: 43 "well"; 14 with "complications" but recovered; and nine "dead". Statistical analysis (Scheffe's s-test) demonstrated the means of "well" and "dead" groups to be different for total protein, albumin, transferrin, and Phe/Tyr. In individual patients the nutritional criteria, even for those with fatal outcome, were poor indicators of outcome. These nutritional criteria are useful in identifying hospitalized groups that are at maximum risk (i.e., death), but are much less useful for individual patients.