Bronchopulmonary complications associated to enteral nutrition devices in patients admitted to internal medicine departments.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Enteral nutrition using feeding devices such as nasogastric (NG) tube or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) is an effective feeding method subject that may give rise to complications. We have studied the relationship between enteral nutrition feeding devices in patients admitted to the Internal Medicine Departments and the development of pulmonary complications (bronchial aspiration and aspiration pneumonia).

PATIENTS AND METHODS

All of the patients discharge between 2005 and 2009 from the Internal Medicine (IM) Departments of the public hospitals of the National Health System in Spain were analyzed. The data of patients with bronchial aspiration or aspiration pneumonia who also were carriers of NG tubes or PEG, were obtained from the Minimum Basic Data Set (MBDS).

RESULTS

From a total of 2,767,259 discharges, 26,066 (0.92%) patients with nasogastric tube (NG tube) or percutaneous gastrostomy (PEG) were identified. A total of 21.5% of patients with NG tube and 25.9% of patients with PEG had coding for a bronchopulmonary aspiration on their discharge report versus 1.2% of patients without an enteral feeding tube. In the multivariate analysis, the likelihood of suffering bronchoaspiration was 9 times greater in patients with SNG (OR: 9.1; 95% CI: 8.7-9.4) and 15 greater in subjects with PEG (OR: 15.2; 95% CI: 14.5-15.9) than in subjects without SNG or PEG. Mean stay (9.2 and 12.7 more days), diagnostic complexity and costs were much higher in patients with SNG or PEG compared to patients in hospital who did not require these devices.

CONCLUSIONS

An association was found between SNG and PEG for enteral feeding and pulmonary complications. Mean stay, diagnostic complexity and cost per admission of these patients was higher in patients who did not require enteral nutrition.