Does artificial nutrition improve outcome of critical illness?

ABSTRACT: Nutritional support is generally considered an essential component in the management of critically ill patients. The existing guidelines advocate early enteral nutrition, with the optimal timing for the addition of parenteral nutrition to insufficient enteral feeding being the subject of transatlantic controversy. The unphysiologic intervention of artificial nutrition in critically ill patients, however, may evoke complications and side effects. Besides the classically described complications, suppression of autophagy, potentially important for cellular repair and organ recovery, was elucidated only recently. The question whether artificial nutrition in critical illness improves or worsens outcome as compared with starvation has so far not been adequately addressed. This paper provides a c

SUBMITTER: Schetz M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4056754 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature