The Rutgers Health Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition Inpatient Consult Service provides evaluation and treatment of patients with complex nutritional requirements resulting from chronic medical problems such as cancer, renal failure, malabsorption, chronic encephalopathy, and heart failure.

We offer many services that involve the use of enteral feeding, which is the delivery of a nutritionally complete food through a tube directly into the stomach, duodenum (the first part of the small intestine immediately beyond the stomach), or jejunum (the second part of the small intestine). There are many methods for enteral feeding to deliver feed and medicine, including:

• Gastrostomy: a tube going directly into the stomach, usually until a patient can chew and swallow
• Nasogastric: a thin plastic tube runs through the nostril, down the esophagus, and into the stomach
• Nasojejunal: a soft tube that goes through the nose, through the stomach, and ends in the jejunum
• Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG): nutrition given via a tube that passes into a patient's stomach through the abdominal wall
• Peripheral parenteral nutrition (PPN): nutrition given through veins other than the superior vena cava
• Total parenteral nutrition (TPN): intravenous feeding through the body’s largest vein, the superior vena cava

We also offer parental counseling and training for the different forms of enteral feeding.

Physicians who are part of our service are faculty members of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, a part of Rutgers University, one of the top research institutions in America. Our doctors are active in research and in teaching about all aspects of pediatric medicine, as well as enteral and parenteral nutrition. Each brings leading-edge knowledge from the classroom to the exam room.

If you are the parent of a child who requires the administration of complex nutrition via tube or intravenous means, please make an appointment with the Rutgers Health Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition Inpatient Consult Service today.