Nutrition support is a necessary therapy for critically ill cardiac surgery patients. However, conclusive evidence for this population, consisting of well-conducted clinical trials is lacking. To clarify optimal strategies to improve outcomes, an international multidisciplinary group of 25 experts from different clinical specialties from Germany, Canada, Greece, USA and Russia discussed potential approaches to identify patients who may benefit from nutrition support, when best to initiate nutrition support, and the potential use of pharmaco-nutrition to modulate the inflammatory response to cardiopulmonary bypass. Despite conspicuous knowledge and evidence gaps, a rational nutritional support therapy is presented to benefit patients undergoing cardiac surgery.
Nutrition support is increasingly recognized as a clinically relevant aspect of the intensive care treatment of cardiac surgery patients. However, evidence from adequate large-scale studies evaluating its clinical significance for patients’ mid- to long-term outcome remains sparse. Considering nutrition support as a key component in the perioperative treatment of these critically ill patients led us to review and discuss our understanding of the metabolic response to the inflammatory burst induced by cardiac surgery. In addition, we discuss how to identify patients who may benefit from nutrition therapy, when to start nutritional interventions, present evidence about the use of enteral and parenteral nutrition and the potential role of pharmaconutrition in cardiac surgery patients. Although the clinical setting of cardiac surgery provides advantages due to its scheduled insult and predictable inflammatory response, researchers and clinicians face lack of evidence and several limitations in the clinical routine, which are critically considered and discussed in this paper.
Background
Cardiovascular surgery patients with a prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) stay may benefit most from early nutrition support. Using established scoring systems for nutrition assessment and operative risk stratification, we aimed to develop a model to predict a prolonged ICU stay ≥5 days in order to identify patients who will benefit from early nutrition interventions.
Methods
This is a retrospective analysis of a prospective observational study of patients undergoing elective valvular, coronary artery bypass grafting, or combined cardiac surgery. The nutrition risk was assessed by well‐established screening tools. Patients’ preoperative EuroSCORE (European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation), primary disease, and intraoperative cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) time were included as independent variables in a multivariate logistic regression analysis to predict a prolonged ICU stay (>4 days).
Results
The number of cardiac surgery patients included was 1193. Multivariate analysis revealed that for prediction of ICU stay >4 days, both Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (area under the curve (AUC): 0.716, P = .020) and Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) score (AUC: 0.715, P = .037) were significant, whereas for prediction of ICU stay >5 days, only the MNA score showed significant results (AUC: 0.762, P = .011).
Conclusion
Present data provide first evidence about the combined use of EuroSCORE, primary disease, CPB time, and nutrition risk screening tools for prediction of prolonged ICU stay in cardiac surgery patients. If prospectively evaluated in adequately designed studies, this model may help to identify patients with prolonged ICU stay to initiate early postoperative nutrition therapy and thus, facilitate an enhanced recovery.
Despite the exponential use of ECLS and VAD over the last decade, the role of nutrition on clinical outcome in this patient population remains an important but yet underinvestigated field.
Abstract:Nutrition support is increasingly recognized as a clinically relevant aspect of the intensive 20 care treatment of cardiac surgery patients. However, evidence from adequate large-scale studies 21 evaluating its clinical significance for patients' mid-to long-term outcome remains sparse.
22Considering nutrition support as a key component in the perioperative treatment of these critically 23 ill patients, led us to review and discuss our understanding of the metabolic response to the
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