ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of a 54-year-old man who has been admitted into the Intensive Care Unit with severe gallstone pancreatitis, complicated by acute kidney injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). The intensive care consultant asks the medical students and junior doctors to 'take care of his nutrition'. Nutrition is an important part of every patient's care and should be optimised with the help of a dietician, in parallel with treating his or her underlying pathology. There are two options for nutrition, namely enteral and parenteral. Enteral feeding can be administered by different routes including oral, nasogastric (NG) tube, nasojejunal (NJ) tube and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG)/jejunostomy (PEJ). When comparing NG and NJ tube feeding, NG tubes are advantageous in terms of being larger in diameter and less likely to block, whereas NJ tubes are better if a patient is at risk of lung aspiration as they bypass the stomach.
