Nasogastric tube insertion in anaesthetised, intubated adult patients: A comparison between three techniques

The existence of several methods for proper placement of nasogastric tube (NGT) and introduction of various novel methods day-by-day indicates that no method is perfect or universally accepted. However, the quest for the best is still on. Application of cold in various forms to stiffen the NGT has been tested inconsistently over the last three decades. In the recent past, frozen NGT has been compared only with conventional methods. Hence, the present study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of the frozen technique in comparison with conventional and reverse Sellick's manoeuvre.

A total of 195 adult patients undergoing abdominal surgeries in anaesthetised and intubated state requiring NGT insertion were allocated to three groups to have their NGT placement using either the conventional method (Group A) or using frozen NGT (Group B) or applying reverse Sellick's manoeuvre (Group C). The number of successful placements of NGT within two attempts, procedure time, and incidences of adverse events were noted.

The highest success rate regarding the successful placement of NGT was observed using reverse Sellick's manoeuvre (95.2%), closely followed by the frozen NGT technique (84.6%) in comparison with conventional method (69.2%). The procedure time was the least with reverse Sellick's manoeuvre (31.5 ± 9.5 s) compared with conventional (42.2 ± 21.4 s) and frozen technique (42.1 ± 13.2 s).

Nasogastric tube insertion using reverse Sellick's manoeuvre shows the highest success rate and having the least adverse events among the compared three methods in anaesthetised, intubated adult patients.