Critical Care Nutrition
Malnutrition is well recognized as a potential cause of increased morbidity and mortality in surgical patients. Adequate nutritional support is crucial in prevention and treatment of malnutrition in critically ill-patients. Critical illness is often associated with a catabolic stress state, and patients demonstrate systemic inflammatory response. Complications such as increased infectious morbidity, multi-organ failure, and prolonged hospitalization are common. Optimal nutrition support during critical illness requires individualized assessment of timing, route and quantity of nutrients and protocolized feeding. The goals of nutritional delivery are to provide nutritional therapy consistent with patient’s condition to improve outcome. Despite the intention to provide appropriate enteral nutrition (EN), meeting the full nutritional requirements can be a challenge due to interruptions. Frequent interruptions may impact provision of calories and proteins and therefore, the clinical outcome. It is also seen that sometimes the tolerability of EN is poor, especially in cases of shock, vomiting and digestive intolerance and also when vasoactive drugs or sedatives are used. Factors leading to inadequate provision of EN include insufficient caloric targets, gastrointestinal (GI) dysfunction, diagnostic and surgical procedures, feeding tube displacement, routine nursing procedures, delayed administration or premature EN withdrawal. While some of the reasons leading to interruption of feeding may be unavoidable, a change in feeding protocol to suit the needs of patients can help in meeting the nutritional needs.
Nutritional support in critically ill patients prevents further metabolic deterioration and loss of lean body mass, decrease in length of hospital stay, morbidity rate and improvement in patient outcomes.
At Pro Health Diet Clinic, Customised feeds are planned keeping in view, patient’s requirements and assistance is provided in development of strategies to monitor and manage nutrition intolerance. This will ensure adequate delivery of nutrients to the critically ill patients and in minimizing interruptions in feeding to reach their nutrition goals.
Consultation Fee: Rs. 1500/-
Diet chart charges extra
