We conducted a monocentric study in a university hospital setting afterethics committee approval over a period of 6 mo 107 in-hospital patients aged between 24 ade 88y were prospectively recruited to this study from a tertiary medical center in northeastern Germany (11 units four different internal and surgery departments) the patients were included consecutively after informed consent was obtained to assess their clinical data to determine whether they received total or supplementary pn.pn was prescribed by the medical staff of the different units without prior involvement of or counseling by an nst reflecting clinical routine practice in this setting.