Individualized parenteral nutrition is the most specialized type of nutritional support in the hospital setting. The composition and prescribing patterns for parenteral nutrition have evolved due to new emerging scientific evidence. In the last few years, there has been a tendency to increase the nitrogen and lipid content and decrease the carbohydrate content. To assess the prescribing pattern in a tertiary referral hospital in Spain, the nutritional composition of individualized parenteral nutrition was evaluated retrospectively from January to December of 2016. A total of 3029 parenteral nutrition units were analysed, corresponding to 257 hospitalized adult patients. Medical specialists in General Surgery and Haematology were the most common petitioners. The three most frequently prescribed parenteral nutrition formulae contained 13.4 (28.8%), 15.7 (19.54%) and 17.9 (17.79%) g of nitrogen. The quantity of carbohydrates and lipids showed a mean non-protein calories-to-nitrogen ratio of approximately 78:1 and a carbohydrate-to-lipid ratio that was near 50:50 in most cases. These results suggest a trend towards the administration of parenteral nutrition with a high content of nitrogen and smaller proportion of the non-protein components.
Keywords: acute disease; lipid emulsion; nitrogen content; nutritional composition; parenteral nutrition; prescribing patterns; tertiary hospital.