A Feasibility Study to Evaluate the Clinical Safety of ENvizion Medical™ Enteral Feeding Tube Placement Using the ENvizion Medical™ ENVUE™ System in Patients

Enteral nutrition is the preferred route for the provision of nutritional support in most critical ill patients with functional gastrointestinal tract. Achieving early enteral nutrition (EN) in critically ill patients is associated with fewer major complications, reduced mortality and length of hospital stay, and significant cost savings. It is estimated that approximately 1.2 million feeding tubes are placed blindly each year in the United States alone. Despite the obvious advantages of the enteral tube feeding, inadvertent placement of Enteral Feeding Tube (EFT) into the airway is relatively common and can result in significant pulmonary injury including pneumothorax and pneumonia. Airway misplacement occurs in 1.2- 4 % of blind EFT insertions, with 0.2 to 1.2% of all the feeding tube placements cause pulmonary complications to patients. The gold standard for detecting inadvertent placement of a feeding tube in the lungs is radiography. However, because of its cost, possible delay of feedings while waiting for radiography, and risk for radiation exposure, clinicians continue to seek for alternative methods to confirm correct placement.

All the above mentioned, emphasizes the fact that safe and effective delivery of nasoenteral tube feedings requires assurance that the feeding tube tip is in a proper position. The ENVUE™ System is an electromagnetic tracking system which tracks the path of the feeding tube during placement. The benefit of the system when EFT is misdirected into the pulmonary system is a real-time visual tracing, which may prompt users to withdraw the tube and reinsert it.