Nutritional care of the trauma patient.

Late mortality following trauma is primarily due to sepsis and multiple organ failure. The early provision of aggressive nutritional support can augment the metabolic response to injury, provide substrates for acute phase protein synthesis, immune response and energy needs, and ameliorate protein catabolism, thus improving survival. Nutritional assessment and techniques of feeding must be individualized to suit the particular organ dysfunction, fluid requirements and metabolic rate of each patient, while avoiding the complications of overfeeding.