Authors

1 Research Center of Nutrition, Department of Nursing, Nursing & Midwifery School, Ahvaz, Jundishapur University of Medical Science Ahvaz, Iran.

2 Nursing care Research Center in Chronic Diseases, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran.

3 Department of Nursing, Nursing & Midwifery School, Ahvaz, Jundishapur University of Medical Science Ahvaz, Iran.

4 Department of Pharmacy School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science Tehran, Iran.

5 Department of Nursing, Nursing & Midwifery School, Ahvaz, Jundishapur University of Medical Science Ahvaz, Iran

Abstract

Background
Nutrition support and noticing the required goal calories in patients having critical conditions are essential aspects of medical care in preventing malnutrition in these patients.
Materials and Methods
This research is a clinical trial which was done on 60 children aging between 5 to 17 years old hospitalized in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Shiraz’s Namazee hospital, South West of Iran, during April to September 2015. Patients were separated randomly into two groups. Enteral nutrition was done with infusion pump for one of the groups and intermittently for the other one.  The data was collected for 7 days by a check list regarding enteral nutrition method, complications and the time needed to reach goal calories. Data analysis was done using SPSS-18 software through Chi-square and t-student test.
Results
The results of this study showed that there was a significant difference of the mean time needed to reach target goal calorie between the continuous and intermittent nutrition methods (P<0.05), so the time was less in continuous infusion method. Results showed that there was no significant difference between the GI complications of the two groups (P>0.05).
Conclusion
This study showed that continuous enteral nutrition method has better outcomes in children hospitalized in ICU than intermittent method.

Keywords