Development of our tube weaning program

During the past 20 years we have been working, observing, discussing and thinking a lot about the typical and the very rare phenomena that a child faces when he or she needs to be fed exclusively by tube. The EAT-DOC's team has travelled all over the world attending conferences, presenting our treatment model at conferences and in workshops involving many desperate families and discussing our technique with colleagues that were not convinced with the "Graz Model".

Experience
The knowledge obtained in this highly specific niche of pediatrics is the result of many years of clinical experience and the privilege of getting to know so many infants and their families from all over the world with specific feeding and eating behaviour problems. These children had all undergone repeated but unsuccessful trails by traditional means and their families trusted us to try to understand their children's resistance, aversion or other reason for refusing to learn to eat food via the mouth as opposed to being fed by tube.
It is our personal ambition and ethical choice to do our best and to offer this experience to as many families as possible. At the same time we have to evaluate the outcomes and results critically, because we are committed to evaluate our work on a scientific level and publish research papers so as to prove evidence of the efficacy of this program.

The Tube Weaning Program
It has taken a decade of clinical experience to set up the program in its present form and we must thank nearly 600 infants and their families for their trust and confidence and willingness to share experiences from which we have learnt so much. We also are very grateful to all our colleagues, superiors, the administrative department and nursing staff within our large hospital complex who have shared their interest, critical views and skeptical perspective especially in those cases which seemed especially difficult to handle. The success rate of more than 95% in children who were all defined as impossible to wean from their tubes tells us that we must be doing something right.