Exploring the clinical characteristics of parenteral nutrition recipients admitted for initial hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

There is a paucity of evidence to guide the initiation of parenteral nutrition administration during hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The purpose of this study was to explore and compare clinical characteristics during early hematopoietic stem cell transplantation to discern if differences existed between those that had parenteral nutrition initiated and those that did not. Medical records of patients admitted for initial autologous or allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from two university transplantation centers were evaluated for this retrospective cohort. A multitude of clinical features were evaluated at baseline and in the days preceding parenteral nutrition initiation to investigate potential differences between parenteral nutrition and non-parenteral nutrition subjects, stratified by donor type. To examine the occurrence of events prior to parenteral nutrition administration, a "before" time frame was created for all subjects. For parenteral nutrition subjects, the actual number of hospital days prior to parenteral nutrition initiation was used; however, for non-parenteral nutrition patients, the transplantation-specific average number of days until parenteral nutrition initiation, depicted as "before" (ie, autologous non-parenteral nutrition "before"=hospital days 1 to 10, allogeneic non-parenteral nutrition "before"=hospital days 1 to 13), was used during this parallel timeframe. Differences were assessed using Student's t and Wilcoxon rank sum tests for continuous variables, and chi(2) for categorical variables. Parenteral nutrition was provided to 53% (n=129/245) of autologous and 65% (n=73/112) of allogeneic patients and was typically initiated on transplant day +6 and day +7, respectively. Significant decreases in oral intake patterns (P<0.0001) and a tendency toward infections were observed for autologous (P=0.01) and allogeneic (P=0.07) parenteral nutrition vs non-parenteral nutrition recipients "before." In addition, significantly more mucositis was observed "before" in allogeneic parenteral nutrition vs non-parenteral nutrition patients (P=0.04). Involvement of nutrition professionals is crucial for the design and implementation of future studies to determine for whom and when to commence parenteral nutrition and to discourage its indiscriminant use.