Nutrition in the intensive care unit
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Correspondence: Charles Weissman Charles@hadassah.org.il
Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Hebrew University -Hadassah, School of Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel
Critical Care 1999, 3:R67-R75 doi:10.1186/cc360
Published: 17 September 1999Abstract
Nutritional support has become a routine part of the care of the critically ill patient. It is an adjunctive therapy, the main goal of which is to attenuate the development of malnutrition, yet the effectiveness of nutritional support is often thwarted by an underlying hostile metabolic milieu. This requires that these metabolic changes be taken into consideration when designing nutritional regimens for such patients. There is also a need to conduct large, multi-center studies to acquire more knowledge of the cost-benefit and cost effectiveness of nutritional support in the critically ill.