Disadvantages of various methods of gastrointestinal feeding in patients admitted to the intensive care unit: A systematic review

Background: Gastrointestinal tube feeding is one of the most important and beneficial methods of nutrition in patients admitted to the intensive care unit. There is still no consensus on the best nutritional method that will lead to fewer complications. This study aimed to investigate the disadvantages of different methods of tube feeding in patients admitted to the adult intensive care unit. Methods: The present study is a review study conducted in 2022. Articles published in the English language databases including Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, and PubMed, between 2000 and 2022 were used. Results: In the initial search phase, 2893 articles were obtained. In the next step, after the review of titles and abstracts, 760 articles remained. Finally, based on inclusion criteria and full text review, 14 related articles were selected. Disadvantages of tube feeding methods were classified into four categories: "respiratory complications", "gastrointestinal complications", "metabolic complications" and "bed occupancy". Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, in terms of complications, intermittent and continuous methods are safer and more preferable than the bolus method. However, low-speed bolus feeding has fewer side effects.