General Paediatric Surgical Provision of Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy in a District General Hospital – A 12-Year Experience

INTRODUCTIONA small, but significant, number of children require long-term nutritional support. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of providing a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) service for children in a district general hospital and to raise awareness of the suitability of the procedure to be performed on paediatric surgery lists in similar hospitals across the UK. PATIENTS AND METHODSA multidisciplinary paediatric nutrition team was established and all children accepted for PEG insertion between 1995 and 2007 were entered onto a database prospectively and are included in this study. PEG tubes were inserted by the standard pull-through technique under general anaesthetic. RESULTSA total of 172 procedures were performed in 76 children. The median age at first tube insertion was 3 years (range, 0.5–18 years). Length of follow-up ranged from 1 month to 12.6 years. Fifty-eight children (76%) had a neurological abnormality, the commonest being cerebral palsy. All but on...