[Enteral feeding. Importance in clinical practice].
The gut is the most important organ for the final digestion, absorption and metabolizing of the nutrients ingested. When the gut is available, it must be used as the ideal way to provide nutrients to the body tissues, either orally or by using a feeding tube to help delivering the nutrients. This type of nutrition has important advantages: One of them is the stimulation of the intestinal cells to preserve its integrity and the guts barrier function; it is economic, safe, efficient and it has been associated to improve the patient's outcome. Nowadays, there are many industrialized formulas available for tube feeding use, as well as a great variety of tubes designed for administrating this formulas, depending on the age, size, and time in which the patient will be using them. The future directions for some cases like its use in critically ill patients or the molecular effects of providing nutrients enterally is still under investigation, and there are still questions to be answered in this broad field.
Fuchs Tarlovsky
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Servicio de apoyo nutricio, Hospital ABC, México, DF. fuchs@data.net.mx
D004750:Enteral Nutrition / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D005526:Food, Formulated; D006801:Humans