Patients Discharged with Home Enteral Nutrition from a Third-Level Hospital in 2018.

Abstract

Patients who, during admission, begin to use enteral nutrition (EN) and do not recover adequate oral intake need proper planning prior to discharge. The present study is a descriptive analysis of patients discharged with EN from our hospital in 2018. In all, the study included 141 patients (50.3% male) with an average age of 76.18 ± 14 years with the most frequent reasons for enteral support being neurological disease (71.3%) and ear, nose, and throat (ENT) and maxillofacial surgery (17.02%) (others accounted for 11.68%). In these two groups, differences were observed in both the average age (77 vs. 70.5 years) and sex of patients-mostly women (58%) in the first group and men (70%) in the second. Overall, the access routes used were nasogastric tube (76.4%), and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (18.4%); 67.1% of the episodes ended by 30 June, 60.6% of patients died (47% of neurological patients), and 39.3% patients recovered function of the oral passage (85% of surgical/head and neck tumor). The duration of support was as follows: 1-3 months, 32%; 6-12 months, 26.9%; more than 12 months, 18.5%. This indicated some frequent and clearly differentiated profiles in the patients studied, which may contribute to better care and support in order to maintain long-term treatment.