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.

Critically ill and injured patients admitted in the intensive care unit have a range of diseases with various severities. Their conditions should be assessed and the patients should receive specialized nutrition therapy depending on their condition. Like general intensive care, nutrition therapy is upgraded every few years with revised information to provide more idealized nutrition support. The main guidelines in this review are from the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) and American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN). Their previous 2009 guidelines were revised and published in 2016. This review summarizes the 2016 SCCM/ASPEN guidelines focusing on the changes from the previous 2009 guidelines.