EDEN Trial Questions Restricting Nutrition to ALI Patients
Major Finding: At day 28, the average number of ventilator-free days in ALI patients who had been mechanically ventilated was 14.9 among those who received trophic enteral feeding for the first 6 days, followed by full-calorie feeding, and was 15.0 days among those who received full calorie enteral feeding from the outset.
Data Source: This was a multicenter, randomized, prospective, open-label trial comprising 1,000 mechanically ventilated ALI patients that was designed to assess the effect on clinical outcomes and survival of initial trophic enteral feeding, compared with full-calorie feeding, for the first 6 days of mechanical ventilation.
Disclosures: Dr. Rice and his fellow researchers disclosed having no financial conflicts of interest.
FROM THE ANNUAL CONGRESS OF THE SOCIETY OF CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE
"Looking ahead, there are a number of places to go" with this research, Dr. Rice said. "Some of the questions we’ve thought about are what role does this play in the [total parenteral nutrition] question, and whether we need to be feeding patients at all. Initially, we thought the idea of not feeding patients would be a hard study to sell, but with these data, it may not be an unreasonable thing to look at."
Dr. Rice disclosed no financial conflicts of interest.
