Enteral feeding and nutrition, has become a major advance to feeding patients with temporary or permanent gastrointestinal function and has only be around for about thirty years. To promote understanding it should be known that feeding tubes in the gastrointestinal tract are referred to as enteral feeding, but when nutrition is supplied to the patient venously it is known as parenteral nutrition.

Companies that manufacture nutritional supplements have developed chemically defined diets that provided all the essential nutrients in a predigested form. Protein and carbohydrates are basic building blocks, with amino acids and glucose, and also contain minimal amounts of fat sufficient only to meet basic dietary requirements along with all the essential vitamins and minerals necessary to promote proper nutritional value.

Some nutritionists developed diets that were intended as low-residue diets for the American space program, these products were also used for providing necessary nutritional value via a feeding tube to surgical patients who could not be nourished with regular food by mouth. Later formulas were made more complex with protein present as peptides, these compounds contain a number of linked amino acids, more complex carbohydrates, and larger amounts of fat. Parenteral fat became available for intravenous administration as a component of parenteral formulas. Some formulas have been specifically developed for children and these products are available in containers that  come with disposable straws.

Nutren Juniors as well as other Nutren products can also be fed through feeding tubes. The use of these products span all ages and disease types. The most popular brands are manufactured by the Nestles Corporation.

There is a wide variety of reasons patients need enteral feeding and nutrition products that include: Diabetes, Glucose intolerance, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Malabsorption, Oncology, Renal Dysfunction, Short Bowel Syndrome, as well as wound management. All of these conditions require the patients to have a balanced diet and the on-going need for proper nutritional value.

Argyle Feed Tube

Supplies needed to properly deliver enteral feeding reach beyond the food itself.  The Bolus feeding tube and the Argyle feeding tube are the most common tubes used in the delivery of the nutritional supplement products to patients. A feeding tube is a medical device used introduce the nutritional supplement to patients who cannot obtain nutrition by swallowing. The Argyle gets its name from the original company that made it, which became a division of Sherwood.

Enteral feedings are either “continuous” or “bolus” servings. Continuous

Enteral Feeding Pump

feedings go through the feeding tube at a fixed rate day and/or night.  This usually decreases tolerance problems to the patient. A very ill or weak patient may need to be fed continuously in order to tolerate enough intake to meet his or her needs.  Sometimes a naso-gastric tube (NGT) is used on patients and is placed into one of the patients nostrils, down the throat and into the stomach.

A peri-epigastric tube (PEG), or gastrostomy tube (G-tube), is a tube that is implanted through the abdomen into the stomach and is normally used on long term patients that will need this type of therapy. Another form of a more permanently place tube is a jejunostomy tube (J-tube) which is implanted below the stomach, directly into the small intestine.

This type of nutritional therapy has become very well known and widely used.  It has increased the quality of life of many patients and has become a very well received therapy for patients that have nutritional or other debilitating conditions that limit the ability of those patients to receive proper nutritional value.