Malnutrition is frequent in patients during a hospital admission and may further worsen during the hospital stay without appropriate nutritional support. Malnutrition causes greater complication rates, morbidity, and mortality rates, which increases the length of hospital stay and prolongs rehabilitation. Early recognition of individual nutritional risk and timely initiation of a tailored nutritional therapy are crucial. Recent evidence from large-scale trials suggests that efficient nutritional management not only improves the nutritional status, but also prevents negative clinical outcomes and increases patients’ quality of life. Multifaceted clinical knowledge is required to ensure optimal nutritional support, according to a patient’s individual situation and to avoid potential complications. Furthermore, clear definition of responsibilities and structuring of patient, and work processes are indispensable. Interdisciplinary and multiprofessional nutritional support teams have been built up to ensure and improve the quality and safety of nutritional treatments. These teams continuously check and optimize the quality of procedures in the core areas of nutritional management by implementing nutritional screening processes using a validated tool, nutritional status assessment, an adequate nutritional care plan development, prompt and targeted nutritional treatment delivery, and provision of accurate monitoring to oversee all aspects of care, from catering to artificial nutrition. The foundation of any nutritional care plan is the identification of patients at risk. The aim of this narrative review is to provide an overview about composition, tasks, and challenges of nutritional support teams, and to discuss the current evidence regarding their efficiency and efficacy in terms of clinical outcome and cost effectiveness.

This study investigated whether enteral nutrition by early tube feeding led to changes in clinical parameters compared to tube feeding after 24 h. Starting on 1 January 2021, and following the latest update of the ESPEN guidelines on enteral nutrition, patients with percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) received tube feeding 4 h after tube insertion. An observational study was conducted to analyze whether the new scheme affected patient complaints, complications, or hospitalization duration compared to the previous procedure of tube feeding starting after 24 h. Clinical patient records from one year before and one year after the introduction of the new scheme were examined. A total of 98 patients were included, and of those 47 received tube feeding 24 h after tube insertion, and 51 received tube feeding 4 h after tube insertion. The new scheme did not influence the frequency or severity of patient complaints or complications related to tube feeding (all p-values > 0.05). However, the study showed that the length of stay in hospital was significantly shorter when following the new scheme (p = 0.030). In this observational cohort study an earlier start of tube feeding did not produce any negative consequences but did reduce the duration of hospitalization. Therefore, an early start, as suggested in the recent ESPEN guidelines, is supported and recommended.