Gastrointestinal dysfunction in the critically ill: can we measure it?
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* Corresponding author: John C Marshall marshallj@smh.toronto.on.ca
Departments of Surgery and Critical Care Medicine, and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael's Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 1W8
Critical Care 2008, 12:180 doi:10.1186/cc7001
Published: 24 September 2008Abstract
Gastrointestinal dysfunction is an intuitively important, yet descriptively elusive component of the multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. Reintam and colleagues have attempted to quantify this dimension using a combination of intolerance of enteral feeding, and the development of intra-abdominal hypertension. While they show that both parameters are associated with an increased risk of death (and therefore that, in combination, the risk of death is even greater), they fall short in developing a novel descriptor of gastrointestinal dysfunction. Nonetheless, and even with its shortcomings, their effort is a welcome contribution to the surprisingly complex process of describing the morbidity of critical illness.