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 (12-14), 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 (4, 9, 14). Hence,
controlled observational studies were used for the purposes of
this paper