Management of gastric residual volume in critical ill patients undergoing mechanical ventilation

Enteral feeding is one of the most common feeding method in intubated patients hospitalized in intensive care units. This method is chipper than parenteral feeding and similar to natural body physiologic. The purpose of this study is review on importance of gastric residual volume management in intubated patients.

This is a review study. Data was collected from databases such as Science Direct and SID and use of Google Scholar search engine and printed articles that published between 2004 to 2015.

Delay in gastric emptying is a common complication in critical ill patients hospitalized in intensive care units that could leads to aspiration, ventilator associated   pneumonia and malnutrition. In order to feeding tolerance assessment, different methods such as gastric residual volume measurement, listening to bowel sound and radiography are used. This article reviewed the gastric residual volume management methods in detail.

Since increasing of the gastric residual volume could reflect the delay gastric emptying, so by control of that, we could prevent complication of it.