Backgrounds: Patients with central nervous system injuries present with dysphagia and may require non-oral feeding methods, like percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy, nasogastric (NG) tube, or oroesophageal (OE) tube. The prevalence of pneumonia in patients with gastroesophageal reflux (GER) is significantly higher than that in patients without GER. We aimed to determine the most appropriate tube feeding with low risk of GER by comparing the results of 24-hour pH monitoring studies in patients who were administered 2 types of feeding: NG tube and OE tube.
Methods: In this pilot study, 6 stroke patients underwent 24-hour esophageal pH monitoring during NG tube feeding and OE tube feeding, sequentially. Parameters collected included acid exposure time, mean esophageal pH, number of reflux episode, time of bolus reflux for both total 24-hour pH study data and postprandial data, and deMeester composite score.
Results: Total acid reflux time (minutes) decreased more with OE tube feeding than that with NG tube feeding in the total 24-hour pH study. The number of reflux episodes decreased in both total and postprandial data with OE tube feeding versus NG tube feeding (P < .05). There were no significant differences in mean esophageal pH and total time of bolus reflux between the 2 groups.
Conclusions: Although we could not definitively conclude that OE tube feeding decreased the severity of GER compared with NG tube feeding, there were significant differences in 4 out of 9 parameters. OE tube can be a substitute for NG tube in patients with dysphagia after stroke leading to GER disease.