Nutritional Supplementation Can Save Lives

Just how important is complete and balanced nutrition? In patients who’ve had traumatic brain injuries, it may spell their lives.

“For a long time, clinicians thought that intravenous fluids were enough — based on anecdotal situations and some basic biochemical knowledge — but now we know that this level of care is not meeting the actual requirement the body needs to repair itself following extreme trauma.”

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.