tube feeding in stroke patients with moderate dysphagia.
Subjects and methods: This was a prospective, single‑group, pre‑post study conducted at Stroke Department, Military Hospital 103 from August 2025 to May 2026, involving 48 stroke patients with a GCS ≥ 12 points and GUSS of 10-14 points. All patients received enteral nutrition via an oroesophageal tube combined with a swallowing rehabilitation program for two weeks.
Results: Mean age was 72.3 ± 10.8 years; 56.3% were male. Tube placement took 4.8 ± 2.1 minutes and 1.4 ± 0.6 attempts. Pain occurred in 47.9%, nausea/vomiting and coughing/choking in 35.4%, cyanosis/dyspnea in 4.2%; abdominal distension and tube obstruction each occurred in 33.3%. After 2 weeks, GUSS increased from 11.8 ± 1.3 points to 18.1 ± 1.9 points (p < 0.001), GCS increased to 14.7 ± 0.6 points, and NIHSS decreased to 10.3 ± 5.2 points (both p = 0.001). Body weight and albumin showed statistically significant increases; in exploratory analysis, age was inversely associated with ΔGUSS. Patient satisfaction reached a mean score of 4.0 ± 0.6 on a 5-point scale.
Conclusion: In stroke patients with moderate dysphagia who retained sufficient ability to cooperate, oroesophageal tube feeding combined with swallowing rehabilitation was feasible to implement, and improvement in swallowing function was observed after 2 weeks. However, because this was an uncontrolled pre-post study, the observed improvement cannot be attributed specifically to oroesophageal tube feeding.