Nutrición hospitalaria : organo oficial de la Sociedad Española de Nutrición Parenteral y Enteral
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Enteral nutrition has demonstrated to be a useful and safe method to nourish critically ill patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. Although the time a severely ill patient can stand without nutrition is unknown, accelerated catabolism and fasting may be deleterious in those patients, and the more common recommendation is to start on artificial nutrition when a fasting period longer than seven days is foreseen. At an experimental level, advantages of enteral nutrition over parenteral nutrition are evident since the use of nutritional substrates via the gastrointestinal tract improves the local and systemic immune response and maintains the barrier functions of the gut. ⋯ Its efficacy is also questioned when the patient has tissue ischemia. For early enteral nutrition to be effective, a treatment strategy must be implemented that includes from simple measures, such as uprising the bed headrest, to more sophisticated ones, such as the transpyloric approach or the use of nutrients with immunomodulatory capabilities. To date, the use of early enteral nutrition is the best method for nutritional support in this kind of patients provided that it is individualized according to each patient clinical status and that is done following an adequate therapeutic strategy.
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Over the last few years, obesity has been constantly increasing, thus turning it into a serious public health problem, with the subsequent impact on health-related expenditure, particularly in developed countries. The main peculiarity of obesity is its association with numerous pathologies (respiratory disease, cardiovascular problems, endocrinological or metabolic disorders, etc.) that leads it to be related with high levels of mortality and morbidity, affecting both the quality and duration of the life of sufferers. The attempts to prevent obesity and, when these fail, the treatments that can be resorted to cover many aspects: behavioural, dietary and medical. ⋯ This is a part of the therapeutic armoury that is enjoying a constant boom, with very favourable results that mean the physiopathology of this condition should be known in greater detail by all of the multidisciplinary team dealing with the problem: GPs, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, general surgeons and anaesthesiologists, with the latter being involved in all of the peri-surgical activity (pre-, intra- and post-operative stages, in the reanimation units). From the standpoint of anaesthesia (the focus of this paper as it is the least well-known of those mentioned), obese individuals are at a disadvantage with respect to other non-obese patients as the process is complicated and the risk increases. With this review of the subject, it is intended to recall the physiopathological changes produced by obesity as well as the anaesthetic implications within the framework of bariatric surgery, so as to achieve the most favourable possible results from the surgery.
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Review Comparative Study
[Administration of glutamine and its dipeptides in parenteral nutrition. Which patients are candidates?].
Despite the fact that glutamine is not considered to be an essential amino acid, it is the amino acid found in the greatest concentration both in plasma (26%) as in skeletal muscle (75%). These levels may decrease in post-operative, trauma, or critical patients. Glutamine performs many functions in which its demand may be increased, such as: it is a precursor of the synthesis of nucleotides; it is an activator of the protein synthesis and at the same time it inhibits the degradation; it is an activator of glycogen synthesis; it is a metabolic substrate for rapidly replicating cells; it is an energy source for the enterocyte which is so important for maintaining the integrity and the function of the intestinal barrier, and the consumption thereof may be increased under conditions of stress. ⋯ This is added to the standard amino acid solution. Glamin, Pharmacia and Upjohn Laboratory, Sweden. This is an amino acid solution with 13.4% essential and non-essential amino acids which are equivalent to 22.4 g of nitrogen/l, and which contain 30.27 g L-glycyl-L-glutamine (10.27 g of glycine + 20 g of L-glutamine).
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A review is made of possible adverse effects of lipid emulsions on the respiratory function, based on the use and acceptance thereof as part of the non-protein caloric supply of the total parenteral nutrition of critical patients from the first hypotheses of the role played by the subsequent lipemia, to the most recent which lend great importance to the eicosanoids generated by the fatty acids supplied by the lipid emulsions. It is also verified whether the observed effects are similar both in healthy as well as in damaged lungs. Another variable to keep in mind, is the rate of administration of the lipid emulsions, which, related to the clearance thereof, could have different actions. Finally, and due to the fatty acid pattern of the lipid emulsion being different than that of the chylomicron, it is evaluated whether the actions of these emulsions may vary as a function of the quantity and quality of the fatty acids supplied.