The Benefit of Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy Is Low in Patients with Dementia / 대한소화기내시경학회지

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) is beneficial in treatment of stroke or head and neck cancer. The situation for dementia is unknown. Presently, results, complications, and survival of PEG patients with or without dementia were assessed. METHODS: In a retrospective analysis of 67 patients, gender, age, diagnosis, laboratory results, complications, tube change, early death and death were compared in dementia (n=5) and non-dementia (n=62) patients (average age 68.7 years). RESULTS: Patient clinical characteristics were not different, except for the proportion of gender. Complications occurred in 11 cases (16.4%). Wound infection was the most common complication followed by Mallory-Weiss tear, tube leakage, fever and pneumonia. Twenty six patients (38.8%) died during the follow-up period, and the 30 day mortality rate was 2.7%. Average survival of dementia and non-dementia patients was 12 months and 25 months, respectively. Dementia patients showed a tendency for shorter survival, although it was insignificant (p=0.068). Dementia was the only predictor of mortality that showed significance (p=0.006). CONCLUSION: In this study there was a tendency for shorter survival in dementia patients and dementia was the only significant predictor of mortality.