A new study has said that patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), should be given nutritional supplementation through a gastric feeding tube as it can improve their chances of survival by as much as four-fold.
Clinician-scientists from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are suggesting an immediate addition of the change in guidelines used in the care of patients with TBI."The evidence shows that the body heals better when it is given proper nutrition, not just the bare minimum that keeps someone alive," says lead author Dr. Roger Hartl, a noted neurological surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, and the Leonard and Fleur Harlan Clinical Scholar and assistant professor of neurological surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College.
"Before now, patients were required to have nutritional supplementation within the first week following their injury, but our findings suggest that this is simply not soon enough," he added.
This is the largest study to ever look at the issue of nutrition and survival following TBI.
For the study, the research team followed survival outcome and nutritional care in 797 patients from 2000-2006.
To formulate their findings, the researchers recorded the length of time it took for each patient to receive gastric nutrition and how many calories they ingested.
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Without gastric feeding within the first 5-7 days of suffering their injury, patients had a two- and four-fold higher likelihood of death, respectively. Also, the study reports that every 10kcal/kg decrease in caloric intake was associated with a 30-40 percent increase in mortality rate.
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Alarmingly, the researchers found that as many as 62 percent of the patients studied never met this level of caloric intake.
"I think these findings say a lot about using what we know from basic research and applying the knowledge directly to the care we give to patients," says Dr. Hartl.
The study is published in this month's issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
Source-ANI
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