Objective: Calorie intake is vital for the treatment of burns. As wound care is managed under anaesthesia in our burn unit, pre-anaesthesia fasting also affects burn patients. Under all these circumstances, we aimed to evaluate the differences between oral and nasogastric feeding with or without anaesthesia management.

Material and Methods: We evaluated 98 patients hospitalized with major burns between 2009 and 2012. Orally fed patients formed the oral group, and patients fed with the nasal route were accepted as the nasogastric group. In our protocol, burns higher than 30% body surface area were fed by nasogastric tube. Pre-anaesthesia fasting was performed, and postoperative feeding was started after 3 hours for all admitted patients. Diarrhoea, vomiting, gastric residues, daily calories, feeding types and anaesthesia procedures were recorded. Differences of complaints and consequences of feeding policies were evaluated in the groups’ own characteristics.

Results: Patients in the nasogastric and oral groups had similar age and gender distribution. 73 patients received oral food, and 25 patients were fed by nasogastric tube. Vomiting was the most common problem (17.8%) in the oral group, and residue (36%) was the most common problem in the nasogastric feeding group. The calorie intake was raised for both groups on the days without anaesthesia.

Conclusion: Nasogastric feeding with high calorie nutrition solutions seems to be an essential route to maintain a reasonable calorie intake for high percentage burn patients. It is more effective when no anesthesia is administered. However, anesthesia is also essential for wound care quality. Providing adequate nutrition support will be a matter of debate. We believe that treatment using anesthesia can be coordinated with adequate nutrition

Keywords: Anesthesia, Burn, Children, Enteral, Nutrition