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Enteral (tube) feeding: routes, feeds, indications and complications sheet
10-mark answer frame

Discuss enteral feeding with its indications, contraindications and complications.

How to lay out the answer. Follow the frame, then write it in your own words.

  1. 1 · Open in two lines. Enteral feeding is nutrition given into the gut, usually through a tube. It is used when the gut works but the patient cannot eat enough.
  2. 2 · Draw the routes. [Sketch: body outline with NG tube through the nose to the stomach, PEG through the abdominal wall, jejunostomy lower down]
  3. 3 · Types of feeds and methods.
    • Blenderized, polymeric, peptide-based, disease-specific, modular.
    • Bolus, intermittent, continuous.
  4. 4 · Indications. Unconscious patients, stroke with dysphagia, head and neck cancer, burns, critical illness, severe anorexia.
  5. 5 · Contraindications. Intestinal obstruction, paralytic ileus, severe GI bleed, intractable vomiting or diarrhoea, shock.
  6. 6 · Complications with prevention. Mechanical, GI, metabolic, aspiration and infection; raise the head, flush the tube, feed slowly and cleanly.
  7. 7 · Close in one line. Enteral feeding is safer and cheaper than parenteral feeding and keeps the gut healthy.

Scoring tip: A labelled sketch of NG and PEG routes takes a minute and earns marks. Group complications into four headings.