[Nutrition in intensive care medicine: Part 2: special nutritional problems]

Therapy of intensive care patients is often complicated by co-morbidities or complex systemic disorders such as sepsis. The necessity to generate an individualized nutritional regime has gained in importance in recent years as this essential part of supportive care has a direct impact on the prognosis of the patient. In the present article a special focus is put on particular questions of nutritional aspects of intensive care patients. The current guidelines and study data on disorders relevant in intensive care medicine, such as acute or chronic renal and liver failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis are presented and discussed. Another focus is the establishment of an adequate nutritional regime for patients after operations or suffering from multiple trauma.