Nitrogen and energy balance in septic and injured intensive care patients: response to parenteral nutrition.

We studied energy and nitrogen balance in 50 intensive care patients with sepsis (n = 18) or multiple trauma (n = 32). Most patients were mechanically ventilated during the study. Within 72h of admission the patients were randomised to receive one of 5 infusion regimens for 48h (group n = 9-11). The control group received hypocaloric glucose, two groups received 1.5g/kg/day of amino-acids, either with hypocaloric glucose on both days or with energy adjusted to pre-nutrition REE on the second day. The fourth group received 0.6g/kg/day of amino-acids and energy at REE, and the fifth group a high nitrogen (18g/day) regimen with a stepwise increase in energy intake from day 1 to day 2. Baseline REE was 118 +/- 18.9% of predicted. No significant differences in REE were observed between the diagnostic groups, treatments or measurements performed during mechanical or spontaneous ventilation. Nitrogen balance in the control group was -250.3 +/- 83.3 mg/kg on day 1 and 218.6 +/- 95.3 mg/kg on day 2. Nitrogen balance remained negative in all groups throughout the study (range of group means-218.6 to -48.5 mg/kg/day). Increasing energy intake equal to prenutrition REE at an amino-acid dosage of 1.5g/kg/day decreased the negative nitrogen balance by 66%. Further increase in energy balance had only a marginal effect on nitrogen balance.