[Nutritional support in critical conditions as intensive care technology].

The patients of intensive care units represent a group in which nutritional support methods, such as enteral and parenteral feeding, are most frequently used to correct protein and energy metabolisms. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most significant clinical problems ensuing in nutritional support in an intensive care unit, such as the high incidence of hospital exhaustion, difficulties in metabolic monitoring and in the determination of patients' needs for nutrients, in the choice for media for intravenous and enteral feeding, in the prevention of possible complications of nutritional support; organizational aspects.