A tube for enteral nutrition of patients with aphagopraxia and patients with ventilator assistance.

A new feeding tube was designed for use in patients who cannot swallow. A comparison of our ability to pass a commercially available, mercury weighted, small feeding tube or the new, nonweighted feeding tube was made. Forty-one consecutive patients who had endotracheal intubation and who had mechanical ventilation assistance or who had suffered injuries to the central nervous system, producing aphagopraxia were compared. In the 22 patients in whom the guided tube system was first tried, enteric support was possible in 20. Gastric placement was possible in only 12 of 19 patients in whom the mercury weighted tubes were first tried and in only one of these patients did the tube pass into the small intestine beyond the ligament of Treitz. Seventeen of 20 nonweighted tubes passed into the small intestine. The newly designed small feeding tube system should be used as the initial means of gaining access to the intestine for enteric nutritional support of patients in intensive care units and after strokes or neurologic injuries when the patient cannot swallow.