Abstract
Purpose:To determine whether our ICU nutritional support protocol, which was operated by multioccupational nutrition support team (NST) members, improves feeding practices and reduces mortality in ICU patients.
Methods:We retrospectively reviewed nutritional management in patients who were admitted to our ICU for longer than two weeks. We compared the results obtained before and after introducing the protocol.
Results:We enrolled 127 patients in the before group and 103 patients in the after group, respectively. As a nutritional evaluation, albumin of 4 weeks later (3.3g/dL vs 3.6g/dL), prealbumine of 3 weeks later (16.9mg/dL vs 20.7mg/dL) were significantly improved. The day of starting enteral nutrition was significantly earlier (3.9±4.2 days vs. 1.8±0.4 days; p=0.038), and the ratio of patients starting early enteral nutrition within 48 hours was significantly higher 35.4% vs. 53.4%; p=0.008).ICU length of stay or ICU discharge mortalityshowed tendency to improve (22.6±11.5 days vs 20.8±7.3 days; p=0.15, 16.5% vs 8.7%; p=0.059). Multiple regression analysis showed that protocol implementation was independently associated with the ratio of starting early enteral nutrition within 48 hours (odds ratio, 2.16; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.17-3.99; p=0.013).
Conclusions:Introducing ICU nutritional support protocol promoted early enteral nutrition, greater nutritional adequacy and improvement of nutritional laboratory data of patients admitted to the ICU for longer than two weeks.
