• Wei Tao, Ping-Song Li, Zhou Shen, Yu-Sheng Shu, and Sen Liu.
• Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery, Subei People's Hospital of Jiangsu province, Jiangsu, 225001, People's Republic of China.
• BMC Anesthesiol. 2016 Jul 18; 16 (1): 39.

BackgroundA previous systematic review and meta-analysis reported that omega-3 fatty acids nutrition may reduce mortality in septic patients. As new randomized controlled trials began to accumulate, we conducted an update.MethodsA PubMed database was searched through Feb 2016, and randomized controlled trials comparing omega-3 fatty acids with control were selected by two reviewers independently.ResultsEleven trials randomly assigning 808 patients were included in the present study. Using a fixed effects model, we found no significant effect of omega-3 fatty acids on overall mortality (risk ratio 0.84; 95 % confidence interval (CI): 0.67 to 1.05, P = 0.12), or infectious complications (risk ratio 0.95; 95 % CI: 0.72 to 1.25, P = 0.70). However, the duration of mechanical ventilation was markedly reduced by omega-3 fatty acids (weighted mean differences (WMD) = -3.82; 95 % CI: -4.61 to -3.04; P < 0.00001). A significant heterogeneity was found when the duration of hospital (I (2) = 93 %; WMD = -2.82; 95 % CI: -9.88 to 4.23, P = 0.43), or intensive care stay (I (2) = 87 %; WMD = -2.70; 95 % CI: -6.40 to 1.00, P = 0.15) were investigated.ConclusionsOmega-3 fatty acids confer no mortality benefit but are associated with a reduction in mechanical ventilation duration in septic patients. However, low sample size and heterogeneity of the cohorts included in this analysis limits the generalizability of our findings.

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