NUTRITION
Nutrition in critical care – the latest ESPEN guidelines
While ESPEN’s approach may be more measured, more tailored and less forthright, the goals of ICU nutrition remain the same: to minimise malnutrition while avoiding complications of nutrition provision during and, for some, well after their hospital stay
July 4, 2019
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Working in the ICU is fast-paced and challenging. Providing a quality nutrition service while managing the complex needs of this heterogeneous group of patients requires a dedicated service by a dietitian with highly developed skills, expertise and knowledge in the field of critical care. The need for a dietitian to change and adapt practice is amplified.
Consensus guidelines are an essential resource in the sea of literature produced in critical care nutrition. They help bring clarity to an area of nutrition that is heavily studied, but has a body of evidence with sometimes overwhelming contradictions.
With each research question addressed, more questions arise exponentially. Fundamental principles such as providing enteral nutrition (EN) early, using EN ahead of parenteral nutrition (PN), and using gastric residual volumes (GRVs) to monitor feed tolerance are no longer as clear cut. Often when making decisions on how best to treat a patient, the best way forward is to go back to the consensus guidelines.
New guidelines
The ESPEN guideline1 on clinical nutrition in the ICU1 is an update and extension of previous ESPEN guidelines on enteral nutrition and parenteral nutrition 2006 and 2009 using upgraded guideline methodology. Previous guidelines were based mainly on observational and retrospective data, but the new document incorporates data from large randomised controlled trials (RCTs) since performed. It is accompanied by a position paper ‘Monitoring nutrition in the ICU’2 that summarises theoretical and practical aspects of monitoring medical nutrition therapy (MNT) in critically ill patients.
The aim was to integrate the best most updated knowledge on ICU nutrition using the expertise of professional methodologists, critical care nutrition experts and critical care professionals to help ICUs deliver optimal nutrition and to illuminate gaps in knowledge to guide future research.
For any dietitian involved in the care of critically ill patients, the ESPEN guideline needs a thorough read – and many re-reads – in conjunction with previous critical care nutrition guidelines. I have done a summary of the most relevant guidelines which will soon be available on www.hse.ie under critical care programme documents and resources. You can also email me at: lshanahan@mater.ie for a copy.
Rather than repeating each recommendation I will discuss the more general recommendations here with a focus on some tools that are useful for integrating the guideline into practice (See Table 1).