Daytime Only Feeding in Critical Illness and Delirium. Version 1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A feasibility randomised controlled trial of administering daytime only enteral feeding compared to standard continuous enteral feeding, to reduce delirium in mechanically ventilated, critically ill adults, with qualitative and circadian mechanistic sub-studies.
IRAS ID
339029
Contact name
Jessie Welbourne
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
Each year in the UK, around 200,000 seriously ill adults are treated in intensive care units (ICUs). Many of these patients need machines to help them breathe and are at risk of developing delirium — a serious and often temporary state of confusion that can affect more than 80% of ventilated patients.
One factor that may contribute to delirium is disruption of the body’s natural circadian rhythm —the internal “body clock” that controls sleep and wake cycles. In ICUs, this rhythm can be disturbed by many things, including how and when patients are fed.Currently, most ICU patients are fed continuously through a tube over 24 hours. Although this is standard practice, it doesn’t match how people usually eat, and it may interfere with the body's natural rhythms. We are testing whether restricting feeding to daytime hours (between 8:00 am and 10:00 pm) helps protect circadian rhythms and therefore reduces the risk of delirium.
This is a feasibility study. That means the main goal is to see whether the feeding intervention and study procedures can be successfully carried out in an ICU setting. We want to understand whether this approach is practical for patients and staff, and whether we can collect the necessary data reliably.
We plan to include 40 ICU patients in this pilot study. Half will receive standard 24-hour feeding, and the other half will receive daytime-only feeding.Alongside this, two smaller studies will look at:
ICU staff experiences with delivering the new feeding approach, to see if it is workable in practice.
Changes in specific markers in patients’ blood to help understand the impact on circadian rhythms.
The results of this feasibility study will help us decide whether and how to run a larger trial in the future to properly test whether daytime feeding improves outcomes for critically ill patients.
REC name
Wales REC 6
REC reference
25/WA/0263
Date of REC Opinion
7 Nov 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion