The Impact of Intervention With High-protein Pre-digested Enteral Formula on Clinical Outcomes in Surgical Critically Ill Patients.

Trial Design and Patient Population

This study is an investigator-initiated, prospective, randomized controlled trial. This study is conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki, and all procedures were reviewed as well as approved by the Regional Hospital Ethics Committee. The written informed consent will be obtained before randomization. We will collect subjects' demographic and clinical characteristics on the first and seventh day of the intervention, including age, gender, weight, height, body mass index (BMI), Disease diagnosis, disease severity (The Acute physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II, APACHE II), Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) Score, disease history, ventilator parameters, body temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and breathing frequency. The complications, length of stay in intensive care unit, total hospitalization Days, hospital mortality, 14-day survival results, 28-day survival results, days of ventilator use will be also recorded.

Patients 20 years of age or older will be eligible for inclusion if they have been admitted to the surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) for 24 hours or more. Subjects with enteral nutrition to be clinically contraindicated by treating clinician considered will be excluded. Total of one hundred and sixty patients will be included and randomly assigned into two groups.

Anthropometric and Biochemical Assessments

The patients' caloric requirement will be calculated based on the guidelines for critically ill nutrition treatment published by ASPEN/SCCM in 2016, suggesting that critically ill patients should be given 25 calories per kilogram of ideal body weight. The protein requirement of patients will be calculated based on the 1.5 g/kg/day recommended by the 2017 ESPEN guidelines for the nutritional care of critically ill surgical patients.