No Tube

With more than 30 years of experience in the treatment of eating behavior disorders and tube weaning in infants and children, the NoTube team helps children learn to eat!

Below here you can read about a fantastic team of people dedicated to getting a child from the feeding tube to eating again, we have been working with them to bring you this page, to give you hope, and show our support for the work they do for the children used to being tube fed.

This page is a smaller window to show you the links to their own much larger site, please click the links you find here.

Not all children come into the world healthy and on schedule. Some children require intensive medical treatment and/or surgery immediately after birth including the need for a feeding tube. The provision of nutrition via a feeding tube is an important and critical temporary medical intervention.

When the time of urgent need or the feeding tube is over and the child could eat orally, a temporary feeding tube should be removed as early as possible.
Many tube-fed children, unfortunately, do not start eating on their own and require extra assistance. Parents and caregivers as well can benefit from additional support and advice. Tube dependency is a rare condition in which a child remains dependent on the enteral nutrition despite no medical necessity for it.

This can happen when a child develops oral aversion due to traumatization by medical treatments including oral interventions, or when a child suffers from constant over-satiation and thus loses the motivation to even attempt to try, touch, or eat food. Sensory difficulties, and developmental delays can further complicate a child’s eating development. With a certain age, children can further develop a psychological dependency as they ascribe their sense of identity and well-being directly to the feeding tube. Sometimes, remaining organic causes such as physical or cognitive impairments causing dysphagia or other swallowing or feeding difficulties may also be reasons why a child stays on a feeding tube. Even in many of those cases, tube weaning may still be successful.

NoTube - helping children learn to eat!

The Austrian-based non-profit organization NoTube is specialized in the treatment of children with tube dependency with eating disorders.

Through their pioneering work, the founders of NoTube, Prof. Dr. med. Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer and Prof. Dr. med. Peter Scheer, developed a method that can, in a very short time, help children in learning to eat and successfully transitioning from tube feeding to oral nutrition.

Their focus on eating and feeding disorders and tube weaning in infants, children, and youth originated at the psychosomatic unit of the University Children´s Hospital of Graz, Austria in 1985. The increasing frequency of cases of tube dependency and feeding and eating behavior disorders in early childhood led to the foundation of NoTube as a spin-off of the Medical University of Graz. With the methods also applied at NoTube, several thousand patients suffering from symptoms of tube dependency and other early eating behavior disorders were successfully treated over the past 30 years.

Since 2019, the NoTube EAT Campus in Graz, where outpatient intensive courses (so-called Eating Schools) take place each year, is recognized as an approved outpatient clinic.

Tube-weaning

With the help of NoTube´s interdisciplinary treatment method, children learn to interact with food playfully and overcome their aversion to food. Central to the treatment are, the physical, sensory, and psychological challenges that children must confront in order to autonomously improve their oral skills. The child’s treatment incorporates the entire family so that parents and caregivers can confidently strengthen their feeding strategies to support their child in a successful transition to oral feeding.

NoTube has identified two central elements in all Graz Model treatment methods

  • On a physical level: let the child experience the sensation of being hungry
  • On a developmental level: strengthen the child’s autonomy

These two simple goals must, on different levels, be respected and understood by both caregiver and child. Every family is different, as is every child. Therefore, despite the fact that every treatment therapy is grounded in the same philosophy, the process is always individually tailored.

Tube weaning can take place both onsite, at the EAT-Campus in Graz,  Austria, and in a completely telemedical setting through their Netcoaching-Program. Both the outpatient and Netcoaching treatment methods have been scientifically evaluated in clinical studies. 80-90% of the nearly 850 tube-fed children who have been treated by the NoTube team since 2009 were successfully weaned from their feeding tube and have achieved independent, age-appropriate eating behaviors.

Treatment of Eating behavior disorders

NoTube’s treatment method is not only effective for tube weaning but is also successful in treating eating behavior disorders and feeding disorders. Some issues that would be appropriate for this method include picky eating, infantile anorexia, developmental delay, difficulties transitioning from the bottle to purees and solid foods, feeding disorders resulting from self-regulation and sensory processing issues, post-traumatic eating behavior disorders,sensory-based avoidance of food, and eating behavior disorders in connection with attachment issues.

What NoTube’s Eating Schools Provide

What NoTube’s Eating Schools Provide

  • A safe, friendly, and diverse environment that allows your child to learn to eat at their own pace
  • Support for you and your family by our highly-specialized personnel.
  • Confidence and training to develop skills to handle the feeding situations of your child.

Prof. Peter Scheer, MD, and Prof. Marguerite Dunitz-Scheer, MD, the founders of NoTube, have pioneered a methodology to teach your child how to transition to learning to eat in a very short period of time. Over the course of 2 weeks, our interdisciplinary team consisting of highly specialized feeding experts trained on the topic of early eating behavior disorders, tube dependency, and tube weaning, will help your child learn to eat without needing a feeding tube any longer.

Since the beginning of 2016, Eating Schools take place at the NoTube EAT Campus in Graz, Austria! The NoTube EAT Campus is nearby the University Hospital for Children and Adolescents as well as the city center of Graz and in good connection to the airport and main railway station. We offer a child-oriented atmosphere and an ideal environment for learning to eat.

Eating Schools

A 2-week intensive course at our NoTube EAT Campus in Graz, Austria, where the leading experts on tube weaning work with you and your child in-person to help them learn to eat orally.

Learn To Eat For picky eaters and children suffering from any other early eating behavior disorder.

What is the Learn To Eat program?

Our Learn To Eat (LTE) program is an online-based ongoing coaching program that helps you support your child as they develop their eating habits.

It’s perfect for children with early eating behavior disorders (picky eating, infantile anorexia, retarded eating development, posttraumatic eating disorders).

Each Learn To Eat program is customized for your child by our team of medical professionals, depending on your child’s unique needs and progress.

Curious if our Learn To Eat program might be right for your child?

https://notube.com/program/learn-to-eat

Schedule Your Free Evaluation Here!

Free 20-Minute Tube Dependency & Feeding Disorder Evaluation 

https://explore.notube.com/en/free-evaluation-by-eva-kerschischnik

 

How Does Netcoaching Work?

We believe that it is only when we participate hands-on in your family’s daily lives that we can achieve long-term tube weaning success. So, with the help of an online platform specifically developed for this purpose, we can make the transition from enteral to oral feeding happen together. Using this platform, you and our medical staff will communicate regarding your child’s progress in the weaning process (e.g. ask questions, upload feeding protocols and videos showcasing your child’s interaction with food). At least daily, we will respond to your questions, analyze your data and provide you with advice on how to proceed with the weaning. In short, you have the leading tube weaning experts “by your side” as you teach your child to eat without a feeding tube.

Why Is Netcoaching So Successful?

Our tube weaning method

We developed our proven tube weaning method over the course of more than 30 years in medical practice and through more than 3,000 tube weanings. The method is based on two simple, yet powerful guiding principles:

  • Allow the child to feel hungry.
  • Allow the child to take the lead.

We’ve discovered that if we provide a safe and secure environment for those two principles to be applied, it is highly likely that your child can learn to eat. In fact, the likelihood of success is 90.5%, to be exact.

Click on the Banner link above to see the video and read the full page on this, very interesting.

Seven crucial points parents should know when choosing a tube weaning program

https://notube.com/additional-topics/crucial-point-for-parents-searching-tube-weaning-program

Psychological Tube dependency - what is it?

https://notube.com/additional-topics/psychological-tube-dependency

Treatment of Eating behavior disorders

https://notube.com/additional-topics/eating-therapy-children-without-feeding-tube

Study: Netcoaching (tube weaning via the internet) is at least as successful as onsite treatment.

https://notube.com/additional-topics/new-study-netcoaching-tube-weaning-via-the-internet-is-at-least-as-successful-as-onsite-treatment