Research

Macro partitioning

In non-septic critically ill patients, early high protein intake (≥1.2 g/kg/day) is associated with significantly lower hospital mortality, whereas energy overfeeding is associated with higher mortality.

For critically ill patients without sepsis, aim for at least 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of pre-admission body weight daily, starting early (by day 4). Crucially, do not overfeed energy; match energy intake to measured energy expenditure to avoid the increased mortality risk associated with overfeeding. This strategy is not recommended for septic patients based on this data.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
In non-septic critically ill patients, early high protein intake was associated with lower mortality and early energy overfeeding with higher mortality.
Peter J.M. Weijs et al. · Critical Care · 2014

Why this rating

The study is a post-hoc analysis of prospective observational data, not a randomized controlled trial, introducing potential confounding.

Source

Early high protein intake is associated with low mortality and energy overfeeding with high mortality in non-septic mechanically ventilated critically ill patients

Peter J.M. Weijs et al. · Critical Care · 2014

DOI 10.1186/s13054-014-0701-z

cohort · n=843Cited 359×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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