Nutritional requirements of the critically ill patient.

Objective: Given the inaccessibility of indirect calorimetry, intensive care units generally use predictive equations or recommendations that are established by international societies to determine energy expenditure. The aim of the present study was to compare the energy expenditure of critically ill patients, as determined using indirect calorimetry, to the values obtained using the Harris-Benedict equation.

Methods: A retrospective observational study was conducted at the Intensive Care Unit 1 of the Centro Hospitalar do Porto.