
Netcoaching Results
Our Results
We’re committed to helping your child learn to eat without the feeding tube. We continuously monitor our programs to make our therapies more effective and publish our results in renown scientific journals. This data driven approach has enabled us to successfully wean over 500 children (and counting) via Netcoaching with a success rate of over 90%. The results below were recently published in the Journal of Pediactrics and Child Health and examine a sample of 169 children treated by Netcoaching between 2009-2012. Ever since, we have continued to collect data and keep adding further publications with more recent data.
Success Rate
- As you can see from the graph, we have weaned 90.5% of the 169 little patients entirely and the feeding tube could subsequently be removed by a local doctor.
- What’s interesting now is to look at the remaining 9.5%. As we will see, based on the extraordinary complexity of the diagnoses that we accept into the program, we have to accept partial weaning success in very few cases.
- We do this only after having tried for several months if it is more beneficial to the family’s quality of life (if feeding continues to take far too long). Also as with any online treatment, we have to accept the fact that a small number of families will “jump off” since it is quite easy to cut the digital “umbilical cord” (interruption of treatment).
Success Guarantee
As you can also see, not a single family who gave it a try and didn’t cancel the treatment for reasons that are beyond our control has had to experience a weaning trial with no success at all. We value this as a great trust in our work since families stick with us in so great numbers (>95%).
Types of feeding tubes & duration of lifetime on tube feeding
- In the above group of 169 children, our data analysis revealed the same outcome success independent of the kind of feeding tube used.
- While only 1 child was fed with a jejunal tube, 78 were fed through a gastrostomy tube and 90 with a nasogastric tube, statistical analysis revealed that the outcome was similarly successful in all groups.
- Average duration of the time that the child was tube fed when measured in total lifetime was around 81%, indicating that most of the children that we treat have been tube fed for the far majority of their lifetime
Can you imagine what that would feel like if you had been tube fed for 80% of your life?
Age & Gender of Children Weaned
It’s interesting to note that the average age of the children weaned was 16 months and the sex was predominantly female (58%), although there is no statistical significance to it, meaning that it could have been the other way around as well.
Reaction of Children to Food
All children taken together show that significant issues and emotions in relation to food exist.
29% react positively to food
36.1% show no reaction to food at all
34.4% react negatively to food
Underlying diagnoses
In order to understand our little patients better, we grouped the variety of their diagnoses into diagnosis groups as is common in medical practice (a complete list of all single diagnoses can be found here). The top three groups most prevalent in our sample are:
(1) Complicated prematurity/birth complications
(2) Malformation/disease of the Gastrointestinal tract
(3) Congenital malformation of the heart
However, as you can see, we’ve dealt with a great variety of different diagnoses as well as in many cases overlapping diagnoses in which we have had to select a main diagnoses amidst the others. In a future paper, we will look at whether significant differences will emerge in the success of different diagnosis groups. As of this moment, we have not yet found any.
This data indicates that we are able to cope with and successfully coach children with even the most complex diagnoses to a life without a feeding tube.
Group of diagnoses | Programme Netcoaching (%) | |
---|---|---|
Complicated prematurity /birth complications | n | 38 (22.5) |
Congenital malformation of the heart ** | n | 32 (18.9) |
Congenital metabolic disease | n | 3 (1.8) |
Malformation / disease of the GIT | n | 35 (20.7) |
Genetic syndromes /chromosomal abnormalities** | n | 21 (12.4) |
Psychiatric disease of child or parents/ non-organic FTT | n | 14 (8.3) |
Neurological conditions | n | 13 (7.7) |
Malformation / disease of the respiratory tract | n | 8 (4.7) |
Oncology and hematology | n | 2 (1.2) |
Renal problems | n | 3 (1.8) |
TOTAL | n | 169 (100) |
CONCLUSION
We truly hope that you were able to find some calm in the graphs and explanations posted here. We understand that every child is fundamentally different but we also think that it is beneficial for you as a parent to see that you’re not alone out there. Other parents have children that are younger, others have a different diagnosis or a different tube, but we manage to help all of them to see to it that their child learns to eat orally. We don’t have to tell you about the side effects that you’ll avoid when the tube will finally be removed!
In order to ensure this high success rate, we stay with you for 35 days after the last tube feed. If your child gets sick and we need to refeed your child by tube, the countdown starts again. By aligning your goals of having a tube-free child with our goal of having a high success rate, we breed a successful tube weaning model that has proven itself in hundreds of cases. Our lead doctors, Prof. Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer, MD and Prof. Peter Scheer, MD, have weaned over 3,000 children in the last 30 years.
Want to read the entire studies mentioned above?
1. Take a look at our comparison of Netcoaching vs. the hospital based wean.The transition to oral feeding was successful in 90.5% (netcoaching) versus 81.3% (onsite) cases.
Success Rate of Netcoaching Versus In-Person Methods
2. Make sure to also look into the side effects of feeding tubes that patients have experienced, which we presented at numerous feeding conferences around the world.
Download Ebook: 7 Reasons To Free Your Child From The Feeding Tube
Every day your child becomes more dependent on the feeding tube.
Each day you wait, it prevents your child from…
- developing age-appropriate skills
- having crucial social learning experiences
- developing a healthy immune and microbiome system