Adequacy of nutritional support in pediatric blood and marrow transplantation

The use of nutrition support has become standard practice in blood and marrow transplantation, but what remains unclear is whether patients receive adequate nutrition supplementation during this time. This study is a retrospective audit of the nutritional supplementation of 34 pediatric patients admitted to a pediatric oncology unit for a blood and marrow transplantation. All patients received parenteral nutrition (PN) as their standard nutritional therapy with an average of 79 +/- 10.6% of their estimated requirements given over the transplant period. The glucose/amino acid infusion was inadequate on 40% of PN days mainly because of fluid overload causing a reduction in infusion rates. The lipid infusion was inadequate on 60% of PN days mainly because of stoppages when drugs and/or blood were infused. The mean percentage weight change on discharge was +0.3 +/- 4.7%. This had a large range of between -9.9% and +7.9% of body weight and did not seem to be related to adequacy of nutrition during transplant. This study showed that although frequent rate reductions in nutrition infusions did occur, most patients still received the majority of their nutritional requirements.