Long-Term Total Parenteral Nutrition with Growth, Development, and Positive Nitrogen Balance

Abstract

This chapter is an experimental and follow-up clinical study showing that normal life could be sustained using parenteral means only. The experimental element involved six beagle puppies who were paired after weaning at eight weeks of age with control littermates. Then, at 12 weeks a vinyl catheter was inserted into an external jugular vein and threaded to the superior vena cava. The end was tunnelled to be brought out on the back between the scapulae and the puppies’ attached to a harness in a ‘metabolic’ cage. Stanley Dudrick was a surgical resident working at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967 with his mentor Jonathan Rhoads. He became the first president and founder of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. Jonathan Rhoads, an adult cancer surgeon, had an equally prestigious career editing the Annals of Surgery and writing the Rhoads’ Textbook of Surgery.