Translating the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism 2019 guidelines into practice

Purpose of review To present a pragmatic approach to facilitate clinician's implementing the recent European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) guidelines on clinical nutrition in the intensive care unit. Recent findings The ESPEN guidelines include 54 recommendations with a rationale for each recommendation. All data published since 1 January 2000 was reviewed and 31 meta-analyses were performed to inform these guidelines. An important aspect of the most recent ESPEN guidelines is an attempt to separate periods of critical illness into discrete - early acute, late acute and recovery - phases, with each exhibiting different metabolic profiles and requiring different strategies for nutritional and metabolic support. Summary A pragmatic approach to incorporate the recent ESPEN guidelines into everyday clinical practice is provided.