Nutritional Support in the Perioperative Period Topic 17 Module 17.4 Nutritional Goals in the Perioperative Period. Facilitating Oral or Enteral Nutrition

• To learn about common methods used to assess nutritional state in preoperative patients; • To review caloric and protein requirements before and after surgery; • To decide what is the most appropriate route of nutrition in various surgical diseases. • To review the causes of postoperative gastrointestinal paralysis; • To learn in some detail about the perioperative interventions that have been shown to promote postoperative gut function; • In particular, to learn about the uses of epidural analgesia and multimodal analgesia to promote bowel function, the importance of fluid balance, and the role, if any, of prokinetic drugs;