Oct 22, 2026 · 13 min · 7 segments
Send us Fan Mail What happens inside a feeding tube left in place for days at a time? Daphna and Christa reunite with Dr. Leslie Parker of the…
the next few years? So what we're really looking at right now is ways to better deliver nutrition to our really sick babies.
And one of the things that we have just finished to study is how do we decrease the risk of contamination of feeding tube.
So if you think about when you give a feeding through a feeding tube, you put it through and then you, most people don't rinse it.
Now, most people do it every seven days, but you can leave it in for 30 days per the manufacturer recommendations.
But that's kind of like sitting a glass of milk on your porch, drinking some milk, not rinsing it out, and leaving it out in the humid Florida weather for two weeks.
And so we have these feeding tubes that are contaminated with biofilm, with bacteria.
And then we just bolus all of that into the baby's gastrointestinal system with each feed.
So what we decided to do was determine whether if we change the feeding tubes more often, every two days versus every seven days, could we decrease that biofilm? decrease contamination and improve infant health.
There was less neck, although that's not statistically significant because we just don't have that much neck.
But we did find some really statistically significant differences in the amount of bacteria.
a follow-up question
I'm curious what your worries are about the long-term clinical effects of these contaminated tubes.
So you mentioned one that I think was on all of our minds as you were talking, which is necrotizing enterocolitis.
Any other thoughts about inflammatory response, microbiome influence? Is it any of that something you looked at or plan to
the next few years? So what we're really looking at right now is ways to better deliver nutrition to our really sick babies.
And one of the things that we have just finished to study is how do we decrease the risk of contamination of feeding tube.
So if you think about when you give a feeding through a feeding tube, you put it through and then you, most people don't rinse it.
Now, most people do it every seven days, but you can leave it in for 30 days per the manufacturer recommendations.
But that's kind of like sitting a glass of milk on your porch, drinking some milk, not rinsing it out, and leaving it out in the humid Florida weather for two weeks.
And so we have these feeding tubes that are contaminated with biofilm, with bacteria.
And then we just bolus all of that into the baby's gastrointestinal system with each feed.
So what we decided to do was determine whether if we change the feeding tubes more often, every two days versus every seven days, could we decrease that biofilm? decrease contamination and improve infant health.
There was less neck, although that's not statistically significant because we just don't have that much neck.
But we did find some really statistically significant differences in the amount of bacteria.
a follow-up question
I'm curious what your worries are about the long-term clinical effects of these contaminated tubes.
So you mentioned one that I think was on all of our minds as you were talking, which is necrotizing enterocolitis.
Any other thoughts about inflammatory response, microbiome influence? Is it any of that something you looked at or plan to
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
