Nutrition in Hospitalized Patients

Intravenous nutrition is an important therapy for the recovery of many patients. It is indicated when the patients cannot take food by mouth or use their intestines for feeding. It is important to indicate it in the appropriate setting because it's not free of complications and is a costly treatment. Some of the complications are: elevated blood sugar or lipids, elevated liver function tests, infection of the catheter or device used to administer intravenous nutrition. Intravenous nutrition is composed by proteins, lipids, carbohydrates (sugar in the form of glucose) and vitamins. Until recently, Intralipid, a soybean oil-based lipid emulsion was the only lipid available in Canada for this kind of nutrition. Since 2010, a new lipid emulsion (ClinOleic) based on olive-oil has been approved by Health Canada for use in intravenous nutrition. There is an increasing need for hospitals to evaluate the quality of intravenous nutrition administered to hospitalized patients in terms of: assessing indications, prescription, complications, clinical results and costs. The objective of this study is to determine if intravenous nutrition prescribed in hospitalized patients is indicated following existing guidelines in terms of timing of nutrition support, prescription, monitoring and whether it is associated with complications. In addition, length of stay and mortality will be assessed. Also, we will evaluate nutritional, infectious and inflammatory parameters in patients receiving soybean oil-based lipid emulsion (Intralipid) compared to those of patients receiving olive oil-based lipid emulsion (ClinOleic).