PROTEIN METABOLISM IN SURGICAL PATIENTS
- I. S. RAVDIN, M.D.;
- NICHOLAS S. GIMBEL, M.D.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
In the past two decades clinicians have placed heavy emphasis on the metabolic role of the proteins in health and in disease, as they have become convinced that malnutrition imposes a real handicap on the seriously ill patient. Adequate protein nutrition has been found essential to all types of wound healing, including the healing of fractures, the adequate functioning of intestinal anastomoses, the repair of regenerating parenchymal organs such as the liver, the resistance to hepatotoxins and other injurious agents and the maintenance of normal fluid distribution in the various compartments of the body. The capacity to form antibodies rapidly in large amounts, as well as the ability to provoke a normal phagocytic response, are also dependent on the state of protein nutrition. A proper protein intake is essential in maintaining a normal mass of erythrocytes and plasma protein, and these in turn are closely correlated with the capacity to
Footnotes
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Read in the General Scientific Meetings at the Ninety-Ninth Annual Session of the American Medical Association, San Francisco, June 27, 1950.
