Feeding Tube Placement
Helping patients maintain sufficient nutrition and a healthy weight
Many things can cause patients to have difficulty eating food.
Trouble swallowing, called dysphagia, can be a result of muscle damage or nerve dysfunction, ultimately leading to the esophagus not being able to move food through to the stomach.
Conditions that commonly lead to dysphagia include cancer, stroke, GERD, or other neuromuscular diseases (ALS, Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, etc.).
A gastrostomy tube is a long-term feeding tube that delivers food (often a densely nutritious liquid food) directly to the stomach, helping a patient to keep well-nourished and of a healthy weight.
A feeding tube can be placed using a minimally-invasive procedure.
To place a feeding tube, the interventional radiologist will use real-time imaging to locate the stomach and a safe point of entry into the stomach.
The patient’s skin is then numbed and a tube is inserted into the stomach through the skin.
A tube placed directly into the stomach is called a gastrostomy tube.
On occasion, a patient may need a feeding tube that enters the stomach but also carries food onward into the intestine. This is called a gastrojejunostomy tube.
Finally, a feeding tube that enters directly into the intestine is called a jeujunostomy tube.