Use of Tube Feeding to Prevent Aspiration Pneumonia

In the US Medicare programme more than 75 000 percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tubes were placed during 1991, most of them in patients with head and neck cancer or neurogenic dysphagia due to dementia or stroke. For the neurogenic group, prevention of aspiration pneumonia is a common therapeutic goal. Yet tube feeding has not been shown to reduce the risk of aspiration or pneumonia. No randomised trials of the intervention have been done, and some data suggest ineffectiveness. Feeding tubes do not prevent aspiration of contaminated oral secretions or regurgitated gastric contents—both well-documented causes of aspiration pneumonia.

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Published: 23 November 1996

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(96)03369-7

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• Department of Error

  • Use of tube feeding to prevent aspiration pneumonia– In table 2 of this paper by Finucane and Bynum (Nov 23, p 1421), the aspiration pneumonia rate among patients with a history of AP in Cogen's 1989 study should have been 11/27 (40·7%).

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