Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition in Patients Admitted to Referral Teaching Hospital and Comparison of Their Effects with Existing Standards

Proper nutrition is a basic requirement for all hospitalized patients, particularly critically ill patients who, for various reasons, are not able to maintain their nutritional status. Nutritional support is an essential component of care in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients and it is commonly performed in two ways of enteral and parenteral nutrition. The present investigation aimed to investigate the nutritional status of this group of patients in comparison with existing standards.

In this study, 50 critically ill patients receiving nutritional support (42 patients were on enteral nutrition and 8 on parenteral) in a referral teaching hospital of Iran were investigated. Each patient was assessed individually and nutritional requirements including calorie and protein were calculated based on age, sex, height, weight, and the stress and activity factors. The total daily energy and protein were compared to standard calculated values. T-test was used to evaluate the differences between separate groups and p

Data showed that 70% of patients in the enteral group did not receive enough calories while only 7% obtained the required protein. In the parenteral group, none of the patients received enough calories or protein.

According to the results of this study, it seems that hospitalized ICU patients receive very poor nutritional support and greater attention should be paid to preventing possible malnutrition-related complications.