Current Nutritional Statuses and Gastrointestinal Complications in Critically Ill Patients Admitted to ICUs in Iran: A Cross-Sectional Study

Adequate nutrition is closely linked to clinical outcomes. Therefore, this study was carried out to assess nutritional statuses of the ICU patients in Isfahan, Iran.

In this cross-sectional study, 55 critically ill adult patients receiving enteral nutrition for a minimum of seven days were participated. Nutritional screening, including acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) score, nutrition risk in critically (NUTRIC) score and nutritional assessments of laboratory data, energy and protein balance, was carried out. Moreover, gastrointestinal problems was assessed.

In total, 55 patients (35 men and 20 women) with the median [IQR] age of 49 [18–77] years and the median [IQR] weight of 75 (55–100) kg were included in this study. The average of albumin concentrations were 3 g/dl ±0.7 in ICU inpatients, indicating decreased albumin levels compared to normal ranges (3.5–5 g/dl). During inpatient period, nutrition screening showed a median range of NUTRIC score of 3 (2–5) and APACHE score of 23 (18–27). In addition, median range of weight decreased to 71 (50–96) kg. Median intakes of energy and proteins for seven days seemed inadequate (1920 [1200–2740] and 86 [49–129], respectively). After gastrointestinal assessment, 20% of the participants had nausea and vomiting, 10% had obstipation, 5% had diarrhea and 20% had enteral feeding intolerance (assessed by GRV > 250 mL at repeated regular (6 h) measurements).

Results have suggested that although imbalanced energy, insufficient protein intakes, and gastrointestinal complications are common in ICU patients especially in women, risk assessment of malnutrition has shown no critical results. Therefore, designing and providing more sensitive methods for the screening of nutrition and assessment of nutritional adequacy is essential to prevent malnutrition in societies.