OBJECTIVES: Providing enteral nutrition (EN) to patients to achieve targeted nutritional support in the hospital has been shown to benefit clinical outcomes, reduce hospital complications, and contain cost. Despite the importance of EN in hospitalized patients, current data on the pattern of EN use in China is limited. This study aimed to identify the patterns of EN use in Chinese hospitals and to identify aspects warranting further research for improving EN practice.

METHODS: Medical record from four Grade-A hospitals in Guangzhou China in 2015 was analyzed retrospectively. Patients hospitalized for more than 24 hours were included in this study. Patient characteristics, EN products, admitted departments, and disease diagnosis were analyzed.

RESULTS: Among 9,228 patients, 61.01% were male and 64.47% had health insurance. The patients aged from 0 to 103 with a mean (SD) of 63.34 (14) years. The hospitalization duration ranged from 1 to 630 days with a mean (SD) of 40.43 (54) days. The total number of EN prescriptions was 40,304. The ratio of patient number and EN prescription among these 4 hospitals ranged from 1:1 to 1:10.24. A total of 11 EN products were identified, 2 of which were used by all 4 hospitals representing 31.96% and 15.87% of the overall EN usage respectively. The departments responsible for the greatest EN use were Internal Medicine (14.42%), Critical Care (12.53%) and Respiratory (12.40%). Among the patients prescribed with EN, 10.20%, 5.74% and 5.39% were diagnosed with lung infection, pneumonia and COPD respectively. EN was mostly administered orally (48.49%) and via nasal feeding (41.89%).

CONCLUSIONS: The majority of EN use in the hospital in China has been shown to confine to a small number of products, departments and disease diagnosis, suggesting important areas for future investigations about improving EN practice in the hospital settings.