In order to complement the search of articles, the references of the obtained articles were also evaluated for relevant articles. This resulted of three more relevant studies , which were used for the purpose of the present article, despite of the fact that two of them had a retrospective nature.
Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), controlled clinical trials, controlled before and after studies that evaluated enteral feeding via nasogastric tube (NGT) or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) effectiveness were included, and prospective observational studies were also included. However, no controlled clinical trials or RCTs were identified. The authors claim that this was main reason for ethical concerns because it is not ethical to allow a group of patients to starve for the purposes of having a control group . Hence, controlled observational studies were used for the purposes of
this paper.