[Nutrition of intensive care patients - how to reach target parameters]

Nutrition of intensive care patients is often complex and challenging due to metabolic changes. For this reason nutritional support adapted to the metabolic state is of key importance to avoid hyper- or hypoalimentation and thus has direct impact on the prognosis. Target parameters might be beneficial to establish an adequate and differentiated nutritional strategy but thus far concerning single nutritional components evidence-based data are only available for adjusting blood glucose levels. Furthermore, an early enteral nutrition is of major prognostic importance. In practice a supplementary parenteral support is often required to provide adequate calorie supply. Monitoring of residual gastric volume as a tool to regulate an effective enteral nutrition might possibly become less important due to recent study data.