Association between illness severity and timing of initial enteral feeding in critically ill patients: a retrospective observational study

Table 4 Effects of the timing of enteral feeding initiation (early feeding) on different clinical and nutritional outcomes

Measured outcomes	APACHE II <20			APACHE II ≥20
	(n = 47)			(n = 61)
Multiple linear regression^†	β	S.E.	p	β	S.E.	p
Clinical outcomes
Frequency of feeding complications (times/d)	−0.045	0.070	0.526	0.084	0.042	0.05
Length of ICU stay (d)	−0.003	3.350	0.999	9.401	2.785	0.001
Length of hospital stay (d)	−10.731	8.187	0.197	10.654	6.155	0.089
Nutritional outcomes
% of target caloric intake	−0.230	7.832	0.977	4.509	6.709	0.504
% of target protein intake	−0.444	8.898	0.960	1.412	8.777	0.873
Albumin on 7^th feeding day (g/L)	92.569	183.796	0.618	220.398	153.507	0.158
Prealbumin on 4^th feeding day (mg/dL)	−0.574	2.527	0.821	1.961	1.874	0.300
Prealbumin on 7^th feeding day (mg/dL)	−1.882	2.916	0.524	3.110	1.688	0.072
24-h UUN on 14^th feeding day (g/d)	6.455	4.435	0.180	5.343	1.730	0.006
24-h UUN on 21^st feeding day (g/d)	5.398	0.516	0.061	6.816	1.864	0.008
NB on 7^th feeding day (g/d)	−8.615	2.219	0.001	−3.687	2.116	0.089
NB on 14^th feeding day (g/d)	−5.954	4.407	0.210	−7.126	2.194	0.004
Logistic regression ^†	Adjusted OR	95 % CI	p	Adjusted OR	95 % CI	p
Clinical outcomes
VAP	2.697	0.38-19.0	0.319	2.062	0.56-7.56	0.275
Hospital mortality	0.400	0.09-1.77	0.227	1.083	0.36-3.29	0.888
Diarrhea	0.519	0.09-2.99	0.463	9.455	1.81-49.44	0.008
GI bleeding	0.433	0.03-6.58	0.547	7.075	1.24-40.32	0.028

APACHE, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation; NB, nitrogen balance; UUN, urinary urea nitrogen; VAP, ventilator-associated pneumonia; ICU, intensive care unit.
^†Multiple linear or logistic regression for examining the effects of the timing of enteral feeding initiation (X) on measured outcomes (Y) after adjusting for gender, age and illness severity. Coding for the timing of enteral feeding initiation (X): early feeding = 1, late feeding = 0.

ISSN: 1475-2891