Comparing Two Methods of Enteral Nutrition in Terms of their Complications and the Time Needed to Reach Goal Calorie in Children Hospitalized in ICU

Background Nutrition support and noticing the required goal calories in patients having critical conditions are essential aspects of medical care in preventing malnutrition in these patients. Materials and Methods This research is a clinical trial which was done on 60 children aging between 5 to 17 years old hospitalized in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Shiraz’s Namazee hospital, South West of Iran, during April to September 2015. Patients were separated randomly into two groups. Enteral nutrition was done with infusion pump for one of the groups and intermittently for the other one.  The data was collected for 7 days by a check list regarding enteral nutrition method, complications and the time needed to reach goal calories. Data analysis was done using SPSS-18 software through Chi-square and t-student test. Results The results of this study showed that there was a significant difference of the mean time needed to reach target goal calorie between the continuous and intermittent nutrition methods (P0.05). Conclusion This study showed that continuous enteral nutrition method has better outcomes in children hospitalized in ICU than intermittent method.