© 2014 American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition

ncp.sagepub.com hosted at online.sagepub.com Review Parenteral nutrition (PN) provides a means of nourishment for patients in whom oral or enteral nutrition is not possible or practical. It was first described at the turn of the 20th century by Vassilyadi et al1 but, for a multitude of reasons, was aban-doned due to the belief that PN was not feasible. Other investi-gators later attempted (without much success) to nourish patients with intravenous (IV) formulations. Dudrick et al2 described the successful administration of PN in 6 beagle pup-pies. In the 1960s, they reported on an infant with biliary atre-sia whose only source of nutrition was PN, who flourished over the course of 2 years.3 Further human trials followe