As the significance of nutrition in intensive care unit grows, large prospective randomized controlled trials on nutrition therapy have been performed and recently published. Each society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition designated recommendations for clinical practice based on the best available evidence and the consensus of experts. The European Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ESPEN) has released a new guideline that has been updated from the previous ESPEN guidelines on enteral nutrition and parenteral nutrition in adult critically ill patients published in 2006 and 2009, respectively. This study examined the latest trends of nutrition guidelines, and especially those of the ESPEN 2018, for intensive care units as compared to guidelines of other societies and older previous guidelines.

Careful nutritional strategy is an essential component in the management of critically ill patients. Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines can be an effective solution to improving the process and structure of nutritional strategy for critically ill patients. The 2015 Canadian clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) summarized the evidence from approximately 354 randomized controlled trials in the area of critical care nutrition since 1980. The Canadian CPGs were first developed in 2003 and have been updated every 2 years. It is important for the acquisition of new evidence-based knowledge. This paper includes a brief summary on changes in 2015 CPGs compared with 2013 CPGs.