[Home enteral nutrition. Case load of the Clinical Hospital of Barcelona]

The use of Enteral Nutrition at Home (ENH) in the Hospital Clínico de Barcelona has grown greatly over the last decade, with a certain trend towards stabilization being observed in the last two years, but still growing at a rate of 9.2% per annum. A transverse analysis of the active patients on our ENH register at a given moment has revealed a total of 315 patients receiving treatment. The retrospective analysis of our series during 1998 gave a figure of 643 new cases. The most frequent indication for ENH was neoplasia (44%), followed by neurological pathology (28%). The administration route most frequently used was oral (66% of cases). In the oral route, oncological diagnoses were dominant (52%), whereas administration by means of a naso-gastric tube was mainly due to neurological disorders (72%). The use of PEG (12.5% of administrations via tube) was distributed between oncological and neurological patients, with a slight predominance of the first. Of those patients completing ENH in the same year, duration was in most cases (67%) less than one month. The decrease of the patient due to the underlying disorder was the main cause of termination, followed by the need for short-term nutritional support following discharge from hospital.