A recent retrospective study suggests that oral nutrition supplements may shorten hospital stays and lower costs when matched against similar patients.

Here’s a link to the abstract: JPEN Oral Nutrition Supplement Study

Some of the details:

• Retrospective analysis of 557,348 hospitalizations of children aged 2–8 years in the Premier Research Database
• ONS were prescribed in 6066 of 557,348 inpatient episodes (1.09%).
• ONS use was associated with a 2.9-day increase (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.32–3.39), or 51.6% increase in LOS, from 5.5 to 8.4 days. ONS use was also associated with increased episode cost of $8568
• Using a matched sample of 11,031 episodes, hospitalizations with ONS use had 14.8% shorter LOS (6.4 vs 7.5 days). Hospitalizations with ONS use had 9.7% lower cost ($16,552 vs $18,320)

Bottomline: Despite the large numbers of patients, the retrospective nature of the study makes it difficult to determine whether these supplements are effective.  Only a randomized study can answer this blog’s title question.