The importance of home parenteral nutrition in clinical practice – own experience from our workplace

Home parenteral nutrition is an alternative route and form of nutrition in patients with irreversible intestinal failure in whom enteral nutrition is not possible or is insufficient in the long run with an increasing energy deficit. Starting parenteral nutrition at home improves the quality of patients’ life and consequently also the course of the underlying disease, with optimization of clinical manifestations of malnutrition. The most common indications for home parenteral nutrition include large reductions of the absorption area due to intestinal resections (Crohn’s disease surgical complications, ischemic small bowel necrosis due to thrombosis in the superior mesenteric vein or embolism or atherosclerotic occlusion of the superior mesenteric artery, but also intestinal failures of different aetiology and cancer with sufficient utilization of essential nutrients). Keywords home parenteral nutrition, short bowel syndrome, komplikácie