| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2004 | Volume
: 12
| Issue : 1 | Page : 30-35 |
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Nutrition in burns
Sameek Bhattacharya, Rajeev B Ahuja
Dept. of Burns and Plastic Surgery, Lok Nayak Hospital and associated Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India
Correspondence Address:
Sameek Bhattacharya
Dept. of Burns and Plastic Surgery,Lok Nayak Hospital and assoc. Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
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Burns patients require nutritional and metabolic support throughout the period of treatment. Nutritional support reduces the complications, increases survival chances and fastens recovery. The catabolic hormones released during the flow phase promotes proteolysis of skeletal muscles and releases amino acids chiefly alanine and glutamine which are major carriers of nitrogen from skeletal muscles to visceral organs. Carbohydrate in the form of glucose is considered to be the best source of nonprotein calories. Tissues like burn wound, neural tissues, red blood cells (RBC) and white blood cells (WBC) utilize glucose in an obligatory way. The combination of glucose and protein improves nitrogen balance and allows more calories to be utilized for restoration of nitrogen balance. Fat is less effective in reducing catabolism of body protein mass as it does not stimulate insulin release. The depletion of intra cellular pool of Glutamine in burns is due to a decrease in muscle synthesis. Glutamine therefore becomes a “conditionally essential amino acid” and needs to be administered.
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