Clinical Nutrition and Gastroenterology

Nutrition support therapy is the clinical practice of delivering tailored nourishment—through feeding tubes directly into the gut (enteral nutrition) or through intravenous infusion bypassing it entirely (parenteral nutrition)—to patients who cannot meet their needs through ordinary eating, including those in intensive care or living with intestinal failure. Getting this right matters enormously: the timing, route, and composition of nutrition in critically ill patients influences immune function, wound healing, organ recovery, and survival. Researchers are actively working to clarify when specific nutrients such as glutamine confer genuine benefit versus harm, how to measure a patient's actual metabolic demands accurately enough to avoid both underfeeding and overfeeding, and what immunonutrition strategies—using nutrients to modulate the inflammatory response—can reliably improve outcomes. For patients dependent on long-term home parenteral nutrition due to conditions like short bowel syndrome, questions about how to maximize quality of life while minimizing complications remain an ongoing priority.

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Keywords

Nutrition Support TherapyCritical CareEnteral NutritionParenteral NutritionIntestinal FailureGlutamine