J.Jpn. Surg. Soc.. 105(2): 200-205, 2004

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Feature topic

RECENT TRENDS IN THE CLINICAL PRACTICE OF NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT IN JAPAN：RESULTS OF A NATIONAL SURVEY CARRIED OUT IN 2001

Nutritional support has advanced and patients can now be given more effective nutritional care. On the other hand, some problems remain, such as inadequate administration of total parenteral nutrition (TPN), catheter-related sepsis, etc. The Committee of the National Survey on Nutritional Support, established under the Japanese Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, investigated the recent trends in the clinical practice of nutritional support in Japan by mailing a questionnaire containing 90 questions to a total of 6,500 physicians in 10 medical departments. The results showed that: 1) surgeons have more interest in nutritional support than physicians in other fields. 2) More than 90% of physicians in Japan still use intravenous hyperalimentation (IVH) instead of TPN and they place more focus on the central venous catheter and insertion of the central venous catheter than on hyperalimentation in the term IVH. 3) There remanins a tendency for surgeons to prefer parenteral nutrition to enteral nutrition. This tendency is supported by data showing that the rate of administering TPN to gastroenterological surgical patients as a postoperative management method is high. To the question,“ How did you learn about nutritional support?", only 18.3% of physicians answered that they studied it in medical school. We may conclude this to be the most important problem in nutritional support in Japan.

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