Gastrointestinal Dysfunction Study Wins Inaugural ESICM Clinical Nutrition Award

To allow best possible research and study into clinical nutrition, Fresenius Kabi offers a wide range of grants and awards for medical professionals around the world. This portfolio now includes the first-ever clinical nutrition research grant connected to the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM).   

Fresenius Kabi is excited to announce that Prof. Arthur van Zanten, MD Ph.D., from Wageningen University & Research and the Gelderse Vallei Hospital, in The Netherlands, is the inaugural recipient of the €20,000 grant, for his proposed Prospective, multicenter study to validate the GastroIntestinal Dysfunction Score (GIDS) and describe prevalence, outcomes, and management of phosphate disorders in intensive care patients.

The five-grade (0-4 points) GIDS was recently developed to assess gastrointestinal dysfunction in adult critically ill patients. Prof. van Zanten’s study will validate GIDS against SOFA scores (which evaluate the severity of illness with different organ functions, but don’t include gut function parameters) to predict mortality. Research centers in Europe and Latin America will be participating in the study. 

“This is an important and complex area of Intensive Care Medicine that urgently needs research, as there are only poor tools available to assess gastrointestinal function of critically ill patients,” said Dr. rer. nat. Valentin Faerber-Frottier, Vice President Medical-Scientific Affairs, Pharma & Nutrition, Fresenius Kabi. “Thus, assessing the gastrointestinal function of critically ill patients is currently complicated. We hope that Prof. van Zanten’s study will help to improve this process and make such assessments more accurate, which would have a telling impact on the medical community.”