Six patients with carcinoma of the esophagus (proximal and middle one-third) underwent intravenous artificial nutrition (TPN) both during preoperative radiation therapy and during the periods preceding radical surgery. From admission on, their conditions were evaluated and followed according to an established pattern of assessment of the nutritional state. Besides a certain improvement of the nutritional state at the level both of the muscular and adipose tissues, the results showed the reliability and the reproducibility of the serial anthropometric indexes adopted. With regard to the biochemical indexes most commonly utilized for evaluating the nutritional state, the results confirmed the doubts already casted about the reliability of a great part of these indexes when applied to this specific kind of patients.

A discontinuous casein supplementationat 24-hour intervals of an only-gluten diet was reported previously to result in an incomplete growth recovery, as well as a delayed liver-cell maturation when the protein level in the diet was 10%. When such a discontinuous supplementation was carried out at 14% protein level, the growth recovery was sufficient to ensure a practically normal terminal body weight; but a delay in liver-cell multiplication was found. Moreover, at both protein levels, the recovery rate on the day of supplementation appeared to depend on the level of nitrogen intake rather than on the balance existing between non-supplemented and supplemented diets. The effects of 24- and 48-hour intervals between successive casein supplements of a 30-percent only-gluten protein diet on growing rats have now been investigated. The results indicate that, at this artificially high protein level, the utilization of the dietary protein, as indicated by several criteria (PER, NGI, NPU), does not appear to be impaired by discontinuity in the supplementation, even when the intervals are as long as 48 h. The growth recovery is complete, and the carcass and liver composition values fall within the normal range. In the liver, at the cellular level, the results indicate a lack of interference with both the cell maturation and multiplication. In addition, the liver cell ability to ‘store’ nitrogen in high-protein diets appears unimpaired by discontinuity in supplementation under the conditions investigated in the present study.