Placement of a Magnetic Small Bowel Feeding Tube at the Bedside

Current methods of achieving postpyloric enteral access for feeding are fraught with difficulties, which can markedly delay enteral feeding and cause complications. Bedside tube placement has a low success rate, often requires several radiographs to confirm position, and delays feeding by many hours. Although postpyloric enteral tubes can reliably be placed in interventional radiology (IR), this involves greater resource utilization, delays, cost, and inconvenience. We assessed the utility of bedside enteral tube placement using a magnetic feeding tube (Syncro-BlueTube; Syncro Medical Innovations, Macon, GA, USA) as a means to facilitate initial tube placement.

We recorded the time to insertion, location of tube, success rate, and need for radiographs in a series of patients given magnetic feeding tubes (n = 46) inserted by our hospitalist service over an 8-month interval.

Of the 46 attempted magnetic tube placements, 76% were successfully placed in the postpyloric position, 13% were in the stomach, and 11% could not be placed. In 83% of the magnetic tubes, only 1 radiograph was needed for confirmation. The median time to placement was 12 minutes (range, 4-120 minutes).

The use of a magnetic feeding tube can increase the success rate of bedside postpyloric placement, decrease the time to successful placement, and decrease the need for supplemental radiographs and IR.