OBJECTIVE: Review the literature regarding parenteral nutrition of preterm infants in order to propose a practical guideline for indication, increase of parameters and monitoring of this nutritional therapy in neonatal units. DATA SOURCE: Studies in English and Portuguese from the last ten years were retrieved from Medline, Embase, Lilacs and SciELO using the following key-words: preterm infants, parenteral nutrition, nutrition therapy and lipid emulsions. Also classical studies and consensus on the theme were manually searched. DATA SYNTHESIS: Parenteral nutrition is an essential treatment strategy for preterm infants. Besides progress in knowledge and legislation, several factors contribute to reduce neonatal morbidity and mortality of newborns using parenteral nutrition and to increase the security in its prescription such as catheters' quality, training of the multiprofessional team and development of new specific parenteral nutrition formulations. CONCLUSIONS: The practical parenteral nutrition guideline proposed here follows international guidelines and was based on critical analysis of the studies published in the last 10 years.
parenteral nutrition; infant newborn; infant premature; nutrition policy
