ABSTRACT
Tissue injury can occur from a variety of etiologies, including trauma, burns, infection, and hemorrhage. These injuries, alone or in combination, can elicit a systemic inflammatory response. The injury and/or the response can be severe enough to warrant admission to the intensive care unit for the management of one or more organ failures. The general treatment approach is to control the cause source, achieve early and adequate microcirculatory resuscitation, and to institute early nutrition support. Enteral nutrition, instituted early after the injury, is the preferred route of nutrition support and appears to be associated with improved patient outcomes. The inflammatory response itself appears to be the origin of much of the altered function observed in the specific immune system, and when persistent it also appears to become an important component in the pathogenesis of multiple organ dysfunction and the progressive form of multiple organ failure.
