Enteral Feeding Practices among Critically Ill Patients in a Tertiary Care Centre

Background: Nutrition is an essential component of general care for critically ill patients. Enteral feeding practices differ between and within the critical care units. These variations in enteral feeding practices can be linked to a shortage of reliable and valid research into the many issues associated with the effective delivery of enteral nutrition. Objectives: This study intended to identify the existing enteral feeding practices in critically ill patients inorder to develop enteral nutritional guideline. Methodology: A prospective observational study was conducted at the critical care units of a tertiary centre in Puducherry. One thousand feeding observations were recorded using the purposive sampling technique. Results: The study included 121 adult patients. Of these, 65% were males. The prescribed feed volume for an intensive care patient is 1772.51±319.5 ml; the mean received volume is 1722.99 ± 447.43 ml. The average deficiency of the enteral feeding is 503 ml; the average excess of the feed volume is 292 ml. Both the deficient and excess feed volumes were fed when the food was given by the bolus method. Enteral feeding was interrupted in 9% of the patients for weaning from the ventilators, in 17% for reasons of haemodynamic instability and in 2% for the purpose of surgical intervention. Conclusion: Adequate nutrition should be a part of the management of the patients in critical care units in order to improve the clinical outcomes, like reduced length of hospital stay, early recovery and reduced infections. An enteral feeding protocol is necessary to minimise the complications of enteral feeding and also to minimise the feeding interruptions.