John W. Drover

TL;DR: Significant potential benefit from implementing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for nutrition support in critically ill adults is improved clinical outcomes of critically ill patients (reduced mortality and ICU stay) and potential harms of implementing these guidelines include increased complications and costs related to the suggested interventions.

TL;DR: Investigating the relationship between enteral nutrition supplemented with immune-enhancing nutrients and infectious complications and mortality rates in critically ill patients found that studies using commercial formulas with high arginine content were associated with a significant reduction in infectious complication rates and a trend toward a lower mortality rate compared with other immune- enhancing diets.

TL;DR: In surgical patients, glutamine supplementation may be associated with a reduction in infectious complication rates and shorter hospital stay without any adverse effect on mortality, and in critically ill patients, the greatest benefit was observed in patients receiving high-dose, parenteral glutamine.

TL;DR: Total parenteral nutrition does not influence the overall mortality rate of surgical or critically ill patients and studies including only malnourished patients were associated with lower complication rates but no difference in mortality when compared with studies of nonmalnouredished patients.

TL;DR: A significant number of critically ill patients did not receive any form of nutrition support for the study period, and those that did receive nutrition support did not meet their prescribed energy or protein needs, especially earlier in the course of their illness.