Anaesthesia | General ICU Care | Principles of Nutrition in the Critically Ill

Principles of Nutrition in the Critically Ill
Session Overview
Description
This session introduces the basic principles and the importance of nutrition and, explains why nutrition in the critically ill differs from healthy subjects. It highlights the difficulties that arise with the delivery of nutrients and describes the commonly-used methods for calculating nutritional requirements.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Recognize the causes of malnutrition in critically-ill patients
• Define the importance and limitations of nutrition in critically-ill patients
• Explain the difficulties in achieving optimal nutrition, how to overcome these and why it is so important to do so
• Estimate nutritional requirements and demonstrate practical aspects of delivery

Nutrition is essential for life. All energetic processes that occur in the body must ultimately derive their energy from the chemical energy stored in food.

During a period of critical illness, the inability to self-feed is almost universal. Patients may also be unable to swallow, digest, absorb or use food normally. Delivery of nutrition to a critically-ill patient is complicated by numerous factors.

Nutrition in the critically-ill patient is complex and clinicians must identify the differences in nutritional requirements between critically-ill patients and other patients in how:

• Nutritional requirements are calculated
• Nutrients may be delivered

Furthermore, the clinician must be aware of the consequences of failure to deliver adequate nutrition to those in a catabolic state.