The common causes of death in the elderly with nasal feeding are: crashing pneumonia, malnutrition, and other diseases.
1. Accumulative pneumonia: It is the most common and serious complication of nasal feeding, which is usually caused by aspiration, mostly due to insufficient length of nasal feeding tube or over-injection of food. It is easy to recur for a long time and lead to patient’s death.
2. Malnutrition: Due to insufficient calorie intake and it is difficult for nasal feeding patients to achieve balanced nutrition, in addition, the consumption of the original disease and the recurrence of other complications, malnutrition is easy to occur, and the severe cases will develop into malignant disease or even death.
3. Other diseases: the aggravation of the original disease, such as stroke recurrence, large cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage, etc.; cardiac diseases, such as malignant arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, severe cardiac failure, etc., may lead to the death of the elderly nasal feeding.
Nasogastric elderly need careful scientific care every day and active treatment of primary diseases, which is crucial to reduce complications and prolong the survival of patients.