Nurse-assisted PEG in pediatric patients.
Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) has become an accepted technique to provide enteral access in children. At the author's institution, this procedure has evolved from being performed by a surgeon and a pediatric gastroenterologist to being performed by two gastroenterologists. As studies in the adult population have shown the efficacy of training an experienced endoscopy nurse to assist with PEG placement, it was decided to develop a nurse-assisted PEG program for pediatric use and to evaluate the safety of this method. Data were collected on 147 consecutive patients undergoing PEG from June 1997 to May 1999. Sixty-nine patients had nurse-assisted PEGs, and 78 had a gastroenterology fellow-assisted PEG. Both groups had a pediatric gastroenterology attending physician as the endoscopist. The two groups were compared for periprocedure complications. No significant difference in the complication rate was found between the two groups. Our experience suggests that PEGs can be safely placed in the pediatric population using a trained endoscopy nurse as first assistant.
Johns Hopkins Children's Center, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA. lwilson@jhmi.edu
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D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004509:Education, Nursing, Continuing / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D005774:Gastrostomy / Q000379:methods* / Q000451:nursing*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D013041:Specialties, Nursing / Q000379:methods*