TREATMENT
The goals of nutritional therapy are to improve PCM and correct nutrient deficiencies. This can be accomplished via oral, enteral, or parenteral methods, or a combination of these modalities.
Intervention in the early stages of malnutrition can improve outcome. Hirsch et al. studied the effects of nutritional supplementation in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis.47 They found that patients receiving a daily supplement of 1,000 kcal and 34 g of protein (given as a casein-based enteral nutrition product) had better outcomes compared with those in the control group; the number of hospitalizations was significantly fewer in the treated group, and additional parameters, including midarm circumference, serum albumin concentration, and hand-grip strength, also improved earlier in the treated group than in the control group. Mendenhall et al. studied the effects of oral nutritional support in patients with alcoholic hepatitis. In patients with severe malnutrition, inadequate caloric intake was associated with 51% mortality compared with 19% mortality in patients who received adequate oral nutrition (greater than 2,500 kcal/day).48 One randomized, controlled trial demonstrated that providing nutritional supplementation to pretransplant candidates did not increase overall dietary energy or protein intake, and did not significantly improve post-transplant outcome. It is thought that the patients who received a nutritional supplement might have compensated for taking the supplement by decreasing their intake of food. This study concluded that regular dietary counseling is as effective in increasing energy intake as providing a nutritional supplement.49