Welcome to all of our new and current G.A.S.P.E.N. members!
The G.A.S.P.E.N. board is very excited and energized about future events and Clinical Nutrition Week, which took place in March this year. Three of G.A.S.P.E.N.’s board members were fortunate to attend CNW15 and have agreed to share some useful information with everyone. As always, we are committed to providing nutrition support education and programming across all
disciplines.
In our Spring issue, you will also see an update of the most prominent and relevant nutrition-related shortages. Many thanks to Ron Spiegalman for this update! In our last issue, you may have noticed a survey about enterally feeding critically ill obese patients. We have the survey results on pages 4-6 of this issue. Lastly, the nutrition support team at Atlanta Medical Center (AMC)
has conducted a quality improvement study to establish institution-specific criteria to identify malnourished inpatients and to compare outcome differences between malnourished and non-malnourished patients with various disease states. We have the abstract of that study on page 10 of this issue.
G.A.S.P.E.N.’s future meeting will be held this summer, and we hope to “go back to the basics” with a focus on acid-base disorders! If there are any particular areas of interest that our members would like to discuss at future meetings, please feel free to contact Adina Hirsch, G.A.S.P.E.N. president, at adina.hirsch05@gmail.com.
I would like to thank everyone who has contributed articles to this issue of the newsletter. If you would like to publish an article in future editions of the G.A.S.P.E.N. newsletter please contact me, Khatija Jivani, at kjivani@gwinnettmedicalcenter.org or Adina Hirsh at adina.hirsch05@gmail.com.
At GASPEN, we strive to provide our members with ongoing educational opportunities and we plan to host another CE event in the near future. Stay tuned for details!
Khatija
Parenteral Nutrition Product Shortage: February Update
Ron Spiegelman, Pharm.D., BCNSP
Shortages of sterile injectable medications, including parenteral nutrition (PN) components, have been ongoing since 2010. These medications are manufactured by a limited number of pharmaceutical firms. Over the past 5 years, the supplies of PN components have fluctuated from having none of a particular component to having a supply sufficient to meet our patients’ daily needs. Many of these shortages have resolved; however, currently, a number of PN components are in short supply (see table below). A.S.P.E.N. and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) have summarized these shortages.
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