Debate over withdrawal or withholding of artificial nutrition appeared a distant discussion until the furor over the Schiavo case and a Papal Allocation reignited this ethical dilemma. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the bioethical opinion regarding artificial nutrition, as published in the Hastings Center Report from 1971 until 2007. A clinical and religious history of th...

Nutritional therapy in the critically ill patient in the intensive care unit (ICU) is an important part of the total care of the patient. Nutrition can be given through parenteral nutrition or enteral nutrition therapy. Parenteral nutrition has been limited recently, but not exclusively, to patients who, for a variety of reasons, cannot be fed enterally. Although the debate concerning parentera...

INTRODUCTION Nutritional support generates complications that must be detected and treated on time. OBJECTIVE To estimate the incidence of some complications of nutritional support in patients admitted to general hospital wards who received nutritional support in six high-complexity institutions. METHODS Prospective, descriptive and multicentric study in patients with nutritional support; t...

1. Describe the possible long-term effects of suboptimal nutrition in preterm infants and critically ill term neonates. 2. Explain why the current standard for postnatal nutrition in preterm infants may not be adequate for postnatal growth. 3. List the the lower limit at which to start intravenous protein delivery in very low-birthweight infants. 4. Characterize the commonly used definition for...

BACKGROUND & AIMS There is increasing evidence that tight glucose control may reduce infectious complications and mortality in surgical critically ill patients. However, data regarding the influence of artificial nutrition on glycemic homeostasis are limited. Our aim was to review all randomized controlled trials on enteral versus parenteral nutrition in acute pancreatitis to determine whether ...

OBJECTIVE To identify the optimal time for introducing enteral nutrition to critically ill neonates. METHODS This prospective cohort study included all eligible critically ill neonates who were admitted to a multidisciplinary tertiary neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) between 1st June and 30th November 2013. Nutrient intake and clinical outcomes during NICU stay were recorded. The effect of...

Artificial nutrition is an inherent part of management in acute pancreatitis. However, there is no consensus regarding the optimal time of the commencement of feeding in these patients. Our aim was to compare the effect of enteral v. parenteral nutrition with regard to the time points when they were administered in the randomised controlled trials. The search was undertaken in the Cochrane Cent...

It is now accepted that, whenever possible, nutritional support should be given enterally, reserving parenteral nutrition for patients with intestinal failure. This is partly because of the many problems associated with parenteral feeding, such as complications of central line insertion and metabolic derangements,1 but recently it has also been appreciated that enteral feeding may have a positi...

This study was conducted to investigate growth and the complications in the hospitalized pediatric patients receiving either enteral (n = 26) or parenteral (n = 15) nutrition. Anthropometric measures as well as the results of biochemical analyses and complete blood counts were recorded. Weight, height and weight for height were expressed in z scores. The improvement in z scores for the 26 child...