NGPOD Plans New “Special Relationship”

ASPEN Nutrition Week

ASPEN Nutrition Week was chosen because it provided the opportunity to engage a wide range of nutrition specialists from across the USA. All Advisory Board participants are leaders in clinical nutrition.

As with the UK Advisory Boards the response to NGPOD was very positive from everyone present with acknowledgement that it is a huge step forward for patient safety as it removes many of the safety issues associated with human error.

It did become clear in line with previous feedback that the USA is not as far advanced in acceptance of pH as the first line method of testing for NGT position as the UK where it has been endorsed as the preferred method for over a decade. Despite this the clinicians felt that there is  a definite move in the direction of test NGT position using pH to avoid the deleterious effects of multiple X-Ray exposure and the costs and inconvenience of X-Rays.

While attending ASPEN the NGPOD team also met with patient organisations to explain NGPOD and again the response was very positive especially with regard to patients managed in the community were testing for NGT position is much more difficult with traditional methods and the inconvenience of admission for X-Ray well recognised.

Stephen Thorpe, NGPOD Executive Chairman summarised the event by saying, “There is clearly a huge opportunity for us in the USA. The clinical community, patient safety organisations and patient advocacy groups are keen to work with the medical device industry to improve patient safety for NG feeding. As a team NGPOD Global are committed to supporting the building of effective alliances to support the wider scale adoption of pH as the NGT positions test of choice as part of our mission to reduce the risk to NG fed patients.”