A retrospective evaluation of immunonutrition assisted nutrition in adult intensive care unit patients for mortality and morbidity

Nutritional interventions for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients are an integral part of the treatment. The diet where specific nutrients are given in higher amounts than the regular diets in order to achieve immune system modulation is called Immunonutrition. Some studies assert that the immunonutritional diets will bring benefits for ICU patients, but at the same time, there are studies claiming the opposite. This study aims to make a retrospective analysis of the potential effects of immunonutritional diets on critically ill patients' length of stay in the intensive care unit and mechanical ventilation, the rate of infection, mortality and morbidity development. In the framework of this study, the files of 163 patients followed-up and treated in our ICU have been studied retrospectively. Two groups have been formed according to the nutrition items they have been given; one being standard diet group (100 patients) and the other immunonutritional diet group (63 patients). The data on the patients have been collected until their discharge from ICU or exitus. The reasons for their hospitalization, length of stay in hospital and ICU, mortality presence, implementation of mechanical ventilation and its duration have been recorded. It has been analysed whether infection have been developed or not during the total observation period of the patients' stay in the ICU. Heuristically, there were no statistically significant differences between the immunonutritional diet group and standard nutrition group in terms of mortality. However, according to the statistics, the length of stay in mechanical ventilation, ICU and hospital has been found significantly high for the patients in the immunonutritional diet group. In addition, nosocomial infections, sepsis, surgical site infection, urinary tract infection rate were significantly higher in the immunonutritional diet group in comparison to the standard diet group. In this study we examined in patients who supported immunonutrition treatment could not observe positive results in intensive care criteria.We believe the fact that immunonutritional diets are basically preferable than the standard diets in the cases where the overall condition of the patients is relatively worse and they suffer from multiple organ failure may be a conducive factor for these results.