Feeding Tube Complications

Possible feeding tube complications include the following: diarrhea; constipation; dehydration; skin issues, especially around the tube; peritonitis, or infection in your abdomen; perforation, or tears in your intestines which are unintentional; and dilemmas with the feeding tube such as obstruction or blockage, and displacement or involuntary movement.

Initially, you may be anxious about using the tube. However, you can relax with confidence that you can be taught everything necessary to know.

With the proper assistance, you can learn how to provide liquid nutrition to yourself, and care for the tube. Professionals can follow up with you after the procedure in a clinic.

Being taught how to use a feeding tube can take some time. Initially, your experience while your body adjusts may be with new symptoms, such as diarrhea or constipation. Your body, over time, will be able to adapt to liquid nutrition.

A feeding tube can provide an alternative, if your condition becomes an eating challenge, to meet the nutritional needs of your body.


There are a number of reasons you may need a feeding tube: you may not be able safely to swallow foods; you risk losing or have lost a considerable amount of weight; and you lack the ability to receive appropriate nutrition from food you consume.

The feeding tube insertion, often times, is vastly beneficial whenever a patient that is elderly does not through traditional methods have the capacity to consume food of sustenance.

Improper use or carelessness, unfortunately, can lead to severe feeding tube complications.

Without suitable infection control and proper protocols, in addition, patients who require feeding assistance can sustain critical consequences, which can lead to medical conditions, which are problematic, as well as death.

Members of family and friends of nursing home patients being fed via a feeding tube need to have an understanding of how the process manifests.

If a member of the family looks malnourished, it is imperative to ask the proper questions and make sure that the staff members assess the patient in preventing the likelihood of any issue with feeding tubes.


Members attending the needs of the patient should make sure he or she is positioned during feeding at the proper angle.

It is essential that members of the staff monitor the patient, and examine indications of dysfunction which includes leaking or infection.

For the utmost care to be provided, there should be monitoring constantly to make certain there is no dislodging or misplacement of the tube; the tube needs to be placed securely in the stomach or the intestines.

Prior to every feeding, this needs to be done; this step is necessary, but overlooked typically by professional members of the nursing home staff.

Experienced attorneys, with skills and expertise, can build a legal case on the neglect of the nursing home in its inability to monitor the victim suitably, while being offered nutrition through a feeding tube.

Negligence and inattention can result in feeding tube complications.

Contact us for a free consultation or call Anzalone Law Firm PLLC, at: 603.548.3797.