Enteral feeding in primary care has increased markedly over the last decade. It allows patients to be discharged to home or residential care who previously would have remained in hospital. Difficulties do arise for patients, their carers and health professionals, as care of these patients and support for health professionals is often patchy or non-existent. Dietitians are uniquely placed to par...

BACKGROUND Community follow-up is often inadequate for patients discharged from hospital following commencement of PEG tube feeding. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS We performed a postal questionnaire to assess if patients/carers were trained in the care of the PEG tube pre-discharge and whether appropriate community follow-up was in place. RESULTS Of 166 PEG tubes inserted during the study period, 6...

OBJECTIVE To report on acquired experience of metabolic support for children with acute neurological diseases, emphasizing enteral tube feeding usage and metabolic assessment, and also to recommend policies aimed towards improving its implementation. DESIGN Retrospective analysis. SETTING Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of Hospital do Servidor Público Estadual de São Paulo. SUBJECTS 44 pati...

INTRODUCTION The exposed section of a traditional nasogastric (NG) tube can interfere with patients' social activities and thereby result in distress. This study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility and safety of a novel two-piece NG tube for patients with dysphagia. METHODS Ten patients with dysphagia were recruited between November 2011 and May 2012. Patients who were unconscious or in...

When is it lawful and ethical to withhold or withdraw treatment and tube feeding? In recent years, the courts have handed down important decisions and medical bodies have issued professional guidelines on withholding and withdrawing treatment and tube feeding. A major criticism of these decisions and guidelines has been that while they prohibit the intentional hastening of a patient's life by a...

OBJECTIVE To compare the sucking pattern of preterm infants on different feeding methods. METHODS The sucking behavior on a gloved finger was evaluated for infants receiving breastfeeding, spoon-feeding and tube-feeding. RESULTS The mean (SD) numbers of sucks in spoon-fed infants [49 (20) vs. 35 (23); P=0.04] were significantly higher, and the grade of suck was significantly better compared...

OBJECTIVE To compare transpyloric feeding tube placement using a pH-assisted placement technique versus a standard placement technique in pediatric patients requiring enteral nutrition. METHODS Critically ill children younger than 4 years were prospectively and randomly assigned to either a pH-assisted or a standard feeding tube placement group. Identical pH-assisted feeding tubes were used i...

Although surgical gastrostomy is not a technically troublesome surgery, the procedure may be accompanied by unfavorable outcomes. Most complications occur early in the post-operative period and include feeding tube dislodgment, stomal infection, peritonitis, and pneumonia. The authors report the case of an 83-year-old man who underwent a surgical gastrostomy because of a swallowing disorder aft...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Acute stroke patients with severely impaired oral intake are at risk of malnutrition and dehydration. Rapid identification of these patients is necessary to establish early enteral tube feeding. Whether specific lesion location predicts early tube dependency was analysed, and the neural correlates of impaired oral intake after hemispheric ischaemic stroke were assessed. ...

Background Percutaneous transesophageal gastro-tubing (PTEG) is a minimally invasive technique to access the gut via an esophagostomy. However, this procedure is not well known and the literature available is still fairly limited. This observational study was conducted to evaluate our experience using this method as an alternative long-term tube feeding procedure when gastrostomy is not suitabl...