Impact of Intermittent and Continuous Enteral Feeding on Ventilator-associated Pneumonia in Pediatric ICUs

Mechanical ventilation has become one of the most important supportive treatment methods to save the life of critically ill children over time. Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a common complication of mechanical ventilation. It is one of the leading causes of hospital-acquired infections in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).VAP can aggravate patients' condition and have adverse effect on mechanical ventilation. Moreover, VAP is associated with significant increased mortality. In those critical ill patients, the catabolism increased, the anabolism decreased, which can induce negative nitrogen balance. The consensus of optimal nutrition therapy in pediatric critical care in the Asia-Pacific, released in 2014, clearly recommended that early enteral nutrition support, which begin within 24-48 hours after admitting in PICU, can significantly reduce the prevalence and mortality of nosocomial infection. Intermittent enteral feeding and continual enteral feeding are the most common methods of enteral nutrition at present. There is no final conclusion about the association between enteral nutrition methods and VAP. Thus, the relationship between enteral feeding and VAP has long been a controversial issue. There is little clinical research on the correlation between enteral nutrition and VAP in children with mechanical ventilation, and mostly were observational studies which lacks strong evidence. How to choose the appropriate enteral nutrition remains an urgent need in PICU clinical work. Therefore, it is necessary for us to analyze the relationship between enteral feeding and VAP in critically ill children. This study would perform a two-year research with mechanical ventilated patients in PICU of four children hospitals in Shanghai, which aim to determine the relationship between different enteral feeding methods and VAP, to collect the baseline characteristic data of ventilated children, to analyze the risk factors for VAP in PICU patients. The results fr