No abstract

These results indicate that PAB may not be a sensitive marker for evaluating the adequacy of nutrition support in critically ill patients with inflammation. Only change in CRP was able to significantly predict changes in PAB, suggesting that an improvement in inflammation, rather than nutrient intake, was responsible for the increases in PAB levels.

Traditional screening and assessment tools did not uniformly identify patients as malnourished or at nutrition risk in the ICU and therefore may be inappropriate for use in this population. Inclusion of physical assessment, functional status, and severity of illness may be useful in predicting nutrition risk in the ICU.

Characteristics of exclusively breastfeeding mothers were examined. Data were collected from 299 mothers delivering at a Midwest medical center (183 inpatient and 76 postdischarge). Mothers who breastfed were more likely to be white, married, have attained a bachelor's degree or higher, and have private insurance. Support from the baby's father was most important to the mothers. Breastfeeding mothers achieved higher scores on the Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale (65.63 ± 6.91 of the 85), indicating more positive attitudes toward breastfeeding compared with formulafeeding (54.86 ± 6.53) and mixed-feeding (60.34 ± 7.64) mothers (P ≤ 0.001). Results suggest that demographics of breastfeeding mothers differ from those of mothers who use formulas to feed their babies.