Mucous-GT residual

[LilyRN99]

When caring for a patient with a GT I am used to residual that is tube feeding colored. Recently one patient has colorless fluid with mucous in it. What could cause this? This is a change for this patient. She usually has food colored or no residual. Should I return or discard this mucous?

[brownbook]

It is very normal for a normal healthy person who takes meals orally to have only colorless fluid with mucous in their stomach. It depends on when they last ate. Your patient may simply have absorbed or digested the all tube feeding. Perhaps there was a longer than usual delay between tube feedings. Or did the prior shift not give the tube feeding at all?

It is very normal for a patient with a tube feeding to have food colored residual.

It's actually not normal to have no residual at all in a normal healthy person taking their meals orally, (there is as always some amount of colorless fluid with mucus in your stomach). A patient with a GT and tube feeding should also normally have some amount of residual in their stomach. However unless other symptoms present themselves I would just assume there was no residual near where the tube was lying in the stomach when you aspirated. Although it is possible the GT has migrated out of the stomach which is a rare but serious problem.

You can return the clear colored mucus.