ABSTRACT
Within the 32 years of its existence our attitude towards artificial enteral nutrition via PEG-tubes has changed in a fundamental way: in our modern understanding nutrition via PEG is supportive, early, preventive, and in many cases temporary. PEG-feeding is not an alternative but a possible supplement to normal oral food intake and requires an individual medical indication as well as an ethical justification. This does not follow standardised algorithmic thinking but is decided on an individual base taking personal wishes, resources, and needs of the individual patient into account. Nutrition via PEG-tube is not a terminal basic or even symbolic treatment at the end of life. The present dilemma of the PEG is that the public discussion primarily focus one-sided on the problems of PEG-placement in multimorbid, elderly, and/or demented patients or patients in end-stage tumour diseases where indeed PEG-placement is neither medically nor ethically justified - we still place PEG-tubes to often in the wrong patients! On the other hand we still consider supportive and in many cases temporary nutrition via PEG too rare and even too late in those patients which clearly could benefit from an early, supportive, and preventive PEG-treatment on the base of our present evidence-based scientific knowledge - we still consider PEG-treatment not adequately and in most cases too late in the right patients! Placing a PEG-tube is not the second last step before death and physicians have to accept the ethically given limits of medical treatment by realizing our modern understanding of the benefits and limits of supportive artificial nutrition via PEG.
