ABSTRACT
Nutritional support has progressed tremendously since 1678, when Sir Christopher Wren used a quill and a pig bladder to inject wine and ale into dogs. However, specialized nutrition support showed little real progress until the 1950s, when the concept of intensive care units was conceived. With the development of these areas of intensive care came the inception of nutritional support of the ICU patient. In 1967, Dudrick et al. [1] demonstrated that a central venous cannula could be used to deliver a concentrated mixture of protein hydrolysate and glucose. Parenteral nutrition was rened and found extensive clinical use in the 1970s. Clinicians were enamored by total parenteral nutrition (TPN) until the 1980s and 1990s, when its disadvantages became apparent. At the same time, the benets of using the enteral route to provide nutrition were being reported [2-5].
