Nutrition Support in Critical Illness — Bridging the Evidence Gap

The modern field of specialized nutrition support began with seminal studies showing that parenteral nutrition could stimulate growth and development in infants, as well as wound healing and convalescence in adults with the severe short bowel syndrome, who until that time had been unable to survive with enteral nutrition alone. 1 , 2 Later, technical developments and recognition that malnutrition among hospitalized patients was common 3 led to growth in nutrition support services. By the 1980s, the use of specialized regimens of enteral and parenteral nutrition were routine in intensive care units (ICUs) worldwide, despite little evidence from rigorous, controlled clinical trials supporting . . .