Tube-feeding for dying patients 'last resort'
Tube-feeding for the terminally-ill should be only a last resort
Wednesday, 06, Jan 2010 01:46
By Mike Trudeau.
Tube-feeding terminally ill patients should be used only as a last resort, and not simply out of convenience, a new report has said.
The Royal College of Physicians and the British Society of Gastroenterology concludes that doctors should not succumb to pressures to switch end-of-life patients to tube feeding except as a last resort.
The report was written to clarify the clinical and ethical issues encountered by healthcare professionals, patients and patients' families.
When a patient is near death, they sometimes naturally stop feeling hunger and stop taking food orally. Families that misunderstand the issues sometimes fear their relatives will starve, when force-feeding them is actually prolonging their death.
On the other hand, to tell a conscious patient they will never eat again is to deal them a devastating blow.
The report aims to sum up the issues surrounding tube-feeding in a concise, comprehensive manner.
Among terminally ill patients near the end of their lives, the report stresses that traditional oral feeding should be the main priority. It emphasises that care homes need to have enough staff to feed patients at all times, to discourage tube-feeding, or nil-by-mouth feeding, out of convenience.
Dr Rodney Burnham of the Royal College of Physicians said: "This report brings considerable and much overdue clarity to a very challenging area. Feeding difficulties can create great uncertainties and even confusion among healthcare professionals, as well as patients and relatives.
Dr David Sanders, of the British Society of Gastroenterology said: "This report not only provides an evidence base for our practise but is also a valuable 'working manual' for clinicians from all disciplines dealing with these highly emotive clinical problems."