Enteral nutrition has many advantages for critically ill patients including lower incidence of infections and a reduced hospital stay, however it is controversial whether enteral feeding via small bowel feeding tubes offers an advantage over gastric feeding tubes in terms of reducing aspiration risk, improving feeding tolerance or ensuring quicker attainment of nutritional goals. The advantages of a small bowel feeding tube over a gastric feeding tube is thought to be related to its post pyloric position, however the insertion of small bowel feeding tubes is technically challenging (most studies report a success rate of 15-30%), can take time and has complications not unlike those of the gastric feeding tube. Our hypothesis is that the small bowel feeding tube offers an advantage to the gastric feeding tube due to its ability to achieve post pyloric placement. Specifically we chose to compare the standard gastric feeding tube (Dubhoff) to a small bowel feeding tube which offers the advantage of having alternating flaps which allows the gut to drag this tube into the small bowel.
The purpose of this study is to compare the success rates of two types of feeding tubes, specifically the standard gastric feeding tube to a small bowel feeding tube.