Nutritional Interventions in Children with Brain Injuries: A Systematic Review

Brain injury has several consequences throughout life, its increased incidence has caused great public concern. The aim was identifying the main nutritional therapies recommended for children with brain injuries.

A systematic review was carried out using the terms in the search strategy: "Brain Injuries", "Nutrition Therapy", and "Child" and their synonyms, from database inception up to August 2020. The search was conducted in the following databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, Cochrane library, LILACS, and grey literature. Two reviewers independently selected the included studies, according to the eligibility criteria and extracted data from the included articles.

A total of 1196 studies resulted from electronic searches, and out of these, 27 studies were read in full and eight studies were included. For early enteral nutritional support (<48 h), results suggest benefit in increasing survival rates. Type of dietary protein seems to be related to decreasing gastric emptying by 40%. The use of fibers seems to reduce gastrointestinal discomfort and increase stool frequency.

The evidence mapped was extracted from small studies analyzing different outcomes, so any decision making should be analyzed considering the context. We present the direction of the effect, but the magnitude is still unclear.