Background:
The treatment of malnutrition, which is of great concern in paediatric haematology/oncology patients, is fraught with problems. the goals of our study were to document the complications and assess the weight gain with gastrostomy tubes (g-tubes) in this population.
Procedure:
Patient data were acquired by retrospective review of all haematology, oncology, and bone marrow transplant (bmt) patients (n = 44) who received radiologically placed g-tubes at our institution over a 4-year period.
Results:
Forty-four g-tubes were placed (59% peri-bmt). at tube placement, 55% of patients were malnourished and 45% were nourished. seventy-five percent of patients had the procedure without general anaesthetic. localized g-tube-site infection was the most common complication (41%). major complications occurred in 3 patients; 2 patients experienced localized peritonitis, and 1 patient developed a localized collection of pus in the abdominal wall. there were no g-tube-related deaths. at 1 month after the tube insertion, 39% of patients had gained, 54% maintained, and 7% lost weight. at 3 months, 69% had gained, 28% maintained, and 3% lost weight. there was a statistically significant weight gain from the time of the g-tube placement to both 1 month (p < 0.018) and 3 months (p < 0.0001) after g-tube placement. patients in all diagnosis categories showed improvement from 1 to 3 months.
Conclusions:
We conclude that retrograde tube placement is safe and can frequently be done without general anaesthetic and that g-tube feeding effectively reverses malnutrition and prevents weight loss in this patient population.