Nutritional Assessment

To the Editor: Baker et al. (April 22 issue) set out to compare two approaches to nutritional assessment.* Their experimental design, however, did not permit a comparison, because the investigators did not incorporate any final determinant of nutritional status. Instead, they relied on the determinants of the incidence of infection, the use of antibiotics, and the length of hospital stay. All three indexes are influenced by many factors in addition to nutritional status. Thus, the authors were able to put their patients into three groups, ranging from the less sick to the sickest, but the determinants of the grouping may . . .