Central total parenteral nutrition (TPN) has been used for nutritional support of the patients with malignant tumor in many institutes. However, it is well known that TPN often threatens the patient's life with severe complications such as sepsis, espescially under immunosuppresive state by aggressive chemo-radio therapy. During the past four years, sixty-six patients with malignant tumor were treated in our institute under enteral nutritional support using low residue diet. They were managed by nasogastric tubes inserted into the stomach. They could be accomplished the schedules of their modality therapy under the successful nutritional management. Chemotherapy often interrupted the enteral feeding because of vomiting, but the duration of vomiting was not verey long, so the patient's nutritional state was not severely supressed. Six patients were canulated for TPN because of uremia, intestinal obstruction and some other reasons, but four of them started again the enteral feeding after TPN. We recommend that enteral feeding is excellent method as a nutritional support for the patients with malignant tumor. Almost all patients can be kept in good nutritional condition without using of TPN. If enteral feeding was impossible for long period due to many reasons, TPN should be indicated, which, however, will be relatively rare.
