Timely and appropriate artificial nutrition support and intervention has been shown to reduce length of stay, and, thereby, costs to the NHS (1) . Parenteral nutrition (PN) is the most expensive form of ready-made artificial nutrition, and should only be used when all other options fail. It requires careful supervision and monitoring and the NST at the Royal Surrey undertake this role auditing the process to encourage the provision of well-planned, clinically effective PN to these 'at risk'

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... ents. In 1996 an audit was undertaken to examine diagnoses, reason for referral and indicators for cessation of PN (2) . This was repeated in 2006 to review recommendations, evaluate if these were being maintained and investigate trends in PN over 10 years. Data were collected retrospectively during the period 1 January-31 December 2006 for 185 PN referrals of which 21 were exclusively ICU, 26 were assigned enteral nutrition, and two had incomplete data: