Nasointestinal versus nasogastric feeding plus prokinetics

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Delivering adequate nutrition to critically ill patients suffering delayed gastric emptying: RCT of nasointestinal feeding versus nasogastric feeding plus prokinetics.

• IRAS ID

  100784

• Contact name

  Stephen J Taylor

• Sponsor organisation

  North Bristol NHS Trust

• Eudract number

  2012-001374-29

• ISRCTN Number

  n/a

• Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

  n/a

• Research summary

  If nutritional needs are met, people needing ??life support?? are less likely to get infected. We can feed into the stomach via a tube. However, illness or treatments often stop the stomach emptying, leading to flu into the patient??s lungs and lung infection. To prevent this a nurse may remove and discard this ??excess?? feed but this leads to underfeeding and risk of increased mortality. ??Prokinetic?? drugs can improve stomach emptying, but they don??t always work, have side-effects (rarely) on the central nervous system or heart and are costly and time-consuming to use. Alternatively using computer tracking we can guide a new tube beyond the stomach in 90% of patients; this permits feeding directly into the intestine even when the stomach isn't emptying. Lastly, nutrition can be given intravenously (IV) but this increases infection risk and cost and so is a last resort. It is unclear from previous research whether it is better to 1) pass a tube into the intestine to feed or 2) feed into the stomach and us prokinetic drugs to help stomach emptying. Since we already use both methods at Frenchay Hospital we would like to compare the methods in a randomised controlled trial. This trials means assigning people randomly (ie. by chance) to treatment 1. or 2. as a fair way of finding the best method of feeding adequately. Because critically ill patients cannot initially consent to treatment we will ask their legally authorised representative (LAR: relatives or clinician) to give consent then ask patients to consent to stay in the study, if and when they are able to do so. All patients will receive the best standard treatment regardless of whether they are in the study.

• REC name

  South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  12/SC/0530

• Date of REC Opinion

  22 Nov 2012

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion