Tube feeding in neurological patients

Patients with neurological diseases are often affected by impaired nutrition. Resulting consequences have a negative impact on morbidity and thus on the patients’ mortality. For this reason, implementing appropriate nutritional management is a matter of significant importance.¹
Implications of malnutrition are numerous. Cognitive impairments but also difficulties in swallowing play an important role. Patients concerned with dysphagia caused, for example, by neurological diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or dementia and stroke, are therefore exposed to a heightened risk – not least by an increased risk of infections, frequent hospital admissions and accelerated functional decline. For example, 2/3 of patients with stroke are affected by dysphagia and therefore are at a higher risk of mortality. In these cases, enteral tube feeding is able to compensate for impaired swallowing.^2,3

The following four example cases illustrate how different patients in the field of neurological diseases may benefit from tube feeding:

• Tube feeding in progressive neuromuscular disease
• Enteral nutrition on neuro-rehabilitation
• Short-term nasogastric feeding during acute illness in dementia
• Long-term feeding in stroke rehabilitation