In old age, many medical complications do not allow people the luxury of eating food normally. In order to maintain the nutritional requirements of the body, ingestion of food is done using tubes which brings along some risks.
With a critical condition of health and the possibility of losing weight rapidly of up to 20 to 30 percent in old age if proper nutritional input is not supplied, the option of feeding by tubes becomes inevitable. In conditions post trauma,surgery, stroke or dementia where the patient gets temporarily impaired and will not be able to sit up to feed normally, will warrant tube feeding.
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Some of the complications involved in the usage of these tubes include:
• Discomfort: The patient will have to forcibly get used to liquid diet. The person suffers from discomfort while being fed through tubes since this causes ingestion of air along with the fluid leading to formation of gas. Also, the very fact that the tube is located in such a place causes physical discomfort as well.
• Infection: Bacteria and other harmful microorganisms find an easy entry in to the body if the site in which the tube is inserted has a leakage.
• Clogging: If the tube is not cleaned thoroughly before and after the fluid has been fed through it or changed periodically, clogging can result causing reduction in the quantity of fluid ingested.
• Disappointment: The patient does not get the satisfaction of having had food even if the nutritional requirements are fulfilled. This leads to depression and most patients do not survive for over a year with this kind of ingestion.
Kum Martin is an online leading expert in elderly care. He also offers top quality articles like:
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