Olive vs. Fish Oil IV Nutrition: Systematic Review Finds No Clear Winner

For patients who cannot eat, intravenous nutrition is not a clinical preference but a condition of survival — and yet the question of which lipid formula best sustains them remains, after decades of practice and theory, genuinely unresolved. A systematic review of six randomized trials comparing olive-oil-based and fish-oil-containing IV nutrition found no decisive advantage for either approach across the outcomes that matter most to critically ill adults. The study, published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, does not close a debate so much as clarify how little the debate has