[Role of Nutrition Support in Cardiac Surgery Patients - an Overview]

Cardiac surgery patients regularly experience a systemic inflammation response to the surgery and a postoperative stay in the intensive care unit. Nutritional support is one strategy to improve the outcome of cardiosurgical patients. A preoperatively diagnosed malnutrition contributes to a higher morbidity and mortality in this patient group. Preoperative fasting, glucose-free infusions during long and invasive operations and delayed postoperative nutrition therapy aggravate the nutrition situation. However, conclusive evidence for this population, consisting of well-conducted clinical trials is lacking.This article outlines the main causes for malnutrition in cardiosurgical patients and summarizes possibilities to identify patients at high nutritional risk, who are most likely to profit from aggressive nutritional therapy. Despite conspicuous knowledge and evidence gaps, a rational nutritional support therapy based on current recommendations of ASPEN, ESPEN and an international multidisciplinary consensus group is presented. The amount and kind of nutrition, as well as the best time to initiate nutrition support, ways to monitor nutrition therapy and the potential use of pharmaconutrition to modulate the inflammatory response to cardiopulmonary bypass are presented to benefit patients undergoing cardiac surgery.