Nutrition Support Among Critically Ill Pediatric Patients: the Current Practice

Background: pediatric intensive care unit (picu) admitted patients are considered as a nutritionallyhigh-risk population, for whom optimum energy and nutrient delivery is an important treatmentstrategy preventing organ dysfunction and subsequently poor clinical outcomes.objectives: the present study aimed to investigate the nutritional adequacy indices andtheir probable relations to clinical outcomes in critically ill children.methods: this project was a retrospective cross-sectional study carried out at the akbarchildren’s hospital, mashhad, iran. all critically ill children with picu stay >48 hours duringmay-june 2019 were enrolled. age, gender, medical diagnosis, nutritional status, energyand protein requirements and deliveries, and clinical outcomes of patients were extracted.results: seventy-one patients were included, among whom 39 subjects (54.9%) weremale. the prevalence of malnutrition was 45.3% and 52.4% in picu patients with surgicaland non-surgical underlying diseases, respectively. there were significant associationsbetween the nutritional status of the patients (upon the picu admission time), infection,and mortality rate. mean±sem values of the estimated energy requirement and deliveredenergy were 85.7±1.6 and 68.3±2.1 kcal/kg/d, respectively. in addition, the estimatedprotein requirement and protein delivery were 2.5±0.08 and 1.8±0.03 gr/kg/d, respectively.energy intake had a negative association with infection rate and lower protein deliverywas negatively associated with prolonged duration of mechanical ventilation.conclusions: significant associations were found between energy/protein delivery andsome clinical outcomes. the findings indicated the necessity of immediate further studieson the efficacy of different nutritional interventions as well as monitoring of optimalnutrition support barriers in critically ill children.