Nutritional Strategies

Abstract

The last decade of intensive care research and practice has seen a shift in priorities: as mortality from critical illness decreases year on year, a growing focus on survivorship has developed [1]. This has led to codification of the burden of survivorship into two distinct but overlapping syndromes: chronic critical illness [2] and post-intensive care syndrome [3]. Both of these are defined not by underpinning mechanism but by the clinical constellations of signs and symptoms – one occurs in the intensive care unit and the other following discharge. Both interact with the third newly emerging syndrome of the persistent inflammatory catabolic syndrome [4], although this relationship remains unclear.