Abstract

prophylactic percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG)

in head and cancer patients in our institute. A retrospective

study of 194 consecutive patients with a newly diagnosed

upper aero digestive tract malignancy who underwent

mainly prophylactic PEG tube placement. The procedure is

relatively safe: 15 (7.7 %) of the complications were

considered serious; no deaths occurred. Of the patients 23

(12.5 %) did not use the PEG tube at all, but it was not

possible to single out a group of patients in which this

could be predicted. The majority of the patients were

considered to benefit from the prophylactic PEG insertion.

To evaluate the use and complications of a