PubMed2000
Patients with multiple injuries and burns are the paradigm of critically-ill patients. Their cases are acute, severe and, fortunately, reversible in a large number of situations. The severe aggressions leading to this kind of condition is the rigger for a maelstrom of inflammatory mediators, metabolic and neuro-endocrinal response, leading to an acceleration in the combustion of the injured organ. This "internal combustion" process takes nourishment from organic reserves, using them up and thus producing dysfunctions in various organs. This is where nutritional support has a role, always remedying the metabolic response to inflammation and attempting to modify it. For this reason, nutritional support plays an undisputed part in the treatment of such patients. This nutritional support, so necessary in situations with a high degree of stress, must be individually tailored in terms of quantity and quality to the process and to the patient in question. Thus, adapting the support to requirements appears as a priority of nutritional assessment. While it is important to provide nourishment to needy patients, it is just as important if not more so to avoid over-nourishment. Indirect calorimetry continues to be the most accurate indicator for determining the needs of each patient and, in view of the lack of knowledge of this technique mainly as a result of economic factors, many different methods and formulas have been proposed to attempt to carry out these adjustments. The characteristics and distribution of the macronutrients will be connected with the pathologies to be treated. And finally, the route for providing this nourishment seems ever more clearly to be as prompt first-line administration through the digestive tube. There are situations in which parenteral support will complement or replace the enteral route when the latter is insufficient or unavailable; in certain circumstances, the parenteral route even seems to be superior to enteral support, as in the case of pure head injury. As these patients are particularly prone to suffer from infections, another aspect of increasing interest in the nutritional support of these patients is the use of immunity-modulating diets, where a better response can be expected. The components of the immunity-modulating diets have been shown to be able to modify the immune response in different ways, sometimes favouring the replication of lymphocytes and at other times stimulating the production of certain types of cytokines and attenuating the release of others, in short balancing the inflammatory response.