Current opinion in critical care
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Aug 2023
ReviewVitamin C in critical illness: end of the story or still a place?
Critical illness is associated with decreased micronutrient levels, including vitamin C, an essential antioxidant for systemic inflammation. This review discusses the most recent evidence of high-dose vitamin C monotherapy in critically ill adults. ⋯ The use of high-dose intravenous vitamin C cannot be recommended for the septic critically ill in clinical practice since the LOVIT trial. Further research is needed to evaluate its potential role in other critically ill patients.
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Curr Opin Crit Care · Aug 2023
ReviewNutrition therapy during noninvasive ventilation: oral or enteral?
Critical care nutrition guidelines primarily focus on patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, yet noninvasive ventilation (NIV) is an increasingly common intervention. The optimal route of nutrition delivery in patients receiving NIV has not been established. This review aims to describe the implications of NIV on the route of feeding prescribed. ⋯ Until evidence to support the optimal route of feeding is developed, patient safety should be the key driver of route selection, followed by the ability to achieve nutrition targets, perhaps utilizing a combination of routes to overcome barriers to nutrition delivery.
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Critical illness imposes a severe insult on the body, with various stressors triggering pronounced cell damage. This compromises cellular function, leading to a high risk of multiple organ failure. Autophagy can remove damaged molecules and organelles but appears insufficiently activated during critical illness. This review discusses insight into the role of autophagy in critical illness and the involvement of artificial feeding in insufficient autophagy activation in critical illness. ⋯ Insufficient autophagy during critical illness is at least partly explained by feeding-induced suppression. This may explain why early enhanced nutrition failed to benefit critically ill patients or even induced harm. Safe, specific activation of autophagy avoiding prolonged starvation opens perspectives for improving outcomes of critical illness.
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This review will focus on the neglected side of metabolic support in ICU survivors: nutritional therapy after critical illness. Knowledge of the evolution of the metabolism of patients that survived critical illness will be bundled, and current practices will be investigated. We will discuss some studies conducted to determine resting energy expenditure in ICU survivors and which identified barriers that cause interruptions in the feeding process based on published data between January 2022 and April 2023. ⋯ Patients may be in a catabolic state during and after ICU discharge, with several factors impacting metabolism. Therefore, large prospective trials are needed to determine the physiological state of ICU survivors, determine nutritional requirements, and develop nutritional care protocols. Many barriers causing decreased feeding adequacy have already been identified, but solutions are scarce. This review depicts a variable metabolic rate among ICU survivors and a significant variation in feeding adequacy in-between world regions, institutions, and patient sub-phenotypes.