Feeding Tube Placement in Hospitalized Older Patients with Dementia

Feeding tubes offer little benefit to patients with dementia, and multiple professional society guidelines discourage their use (e.g., NEJM JW Gen Med Sep 15 2014 and J Am Geriatr Soc 2014; 62:1590) — yet the practice continues. In this population-based cohort study, researchers explored this issue by analyzing administrative data from 140,000 patients (median age, 85) with dementia who were hospitalized from 2021 to 2024 in Ontario, Canada.

Key findings were as follows:

• 1% of hospitalized patients with dementia received feeding tubes.

• Patients who had feeding tubes placed had longer mean length of hospital stay (66 vs. 15 days) and were more likely to be admitted to intensive care (43% vs. 10%) and to die in the hospital (22% vs. 10%).

• More pa…