National registry of home enteral nutrition in Spain 2007

To communicate the results from the registry of Home-Based Enteral Nutrition of the NADYASENPE group in 2007. We included every patient in the registry with home enteral nutrition any time from January 1st to December 31st of 2007. The number of patients with home enteral nutrition in 2007 was 5,107 (52% male) from 28 different hospitals. 95.4% of them were 15 yr or older, with a mean age of 67.96 +/- 18.12, and 4.2 +/- 3.38 among patients aged 14 yr or less. The most common underlying diseases were neurological (37.8%) and neoplastic diseases (29.3%). Enteral nutrition was administered p.o. in most patients (63.5%), followed by nasogastric tube (25.9%), while gastrostomy was only used in 9.2%. The mean time in enteral nutrition support was 9.4 months and the most common reasons for withdrawal were death (58.7%) and switching to oral intake (32%). Activity was limited in 31.4% of patients and 36.01% were house-bound. Most patients needed partial (26.51%) or total (37.68%) care assistance. Enteral formula was provided by hospitals to 69.14% of patients and by pharmacies to 30.17% of them, while disposable material was provided by hospitals to 81.63% and by Primary Care to the remaining patients. In 2007, there has been an increase of more than 30% of patients registered with home enteral nutrition comparing with 2006, without any big difference in other data, but a higher proportion of patients with enteral nutrition p.o.