Malnutrition is frequent in hospitalized patients and may worsen during hospital stay. Malnutrition is associated with poor outcomes, including increased morbidity, mortality, length of hospital stay, and healthcare costs. Early screening of individual nutritional risk and use of personalized nutritional therapy may improve medical outcomes and increase patient quality of life. Use of specialized nutrition support for hospitalized patients has become a standard tool to ensure quality and safety of nutritional treatments. With the development of specialized programs, multifaceted clinical knowledge is required to provide optimal nutritional support by patient. Thus, a multidisciplinary approach is essential. Since the Ministry of Health and Welfare launched legislation for reimbursement of Nutrition Support Team (NST) activities in Korea, NSTs have necessarily comprised a physician, a nurse, a pharmacist, and an experienced dietitian. Furthermore, research on nutrition support through NST activities has recently been recommended for improving practice quality.

In 2021, Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Surgical Metabolism and Nutrition were combined into Annals of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ACNM). Integrating the two journals is the result of mutual understanding based on more than 10 years of experience in multidisciplinary team collaboration. This is also why remarkable development in research of clinical nutrition and metabolism is expected in Korea.

This is the fourth issue of the integrated journal. ACNM, previously published twice a year, will be issued three times a year starting in 2023. ACNM welcomes submissions of articles on clinical nutrition and looks forward to member contributions.