Facts About The Global Enteral Device Supplier Association

People have to get admitted in medical facilities with the sole purpose of receiving proper treatment. While the medical professionals try their utmost to provide the required care and even take pains to deliver nutrition as well as lifesaving drugs with the help of tubes, a misconnection might prove to be fatal for the patient. Sure, such instances have been rife in the past that necessitated the formation of “global enteral device supplier association,” known by its acronym GEDSA.

What could the association do though? This is the question that has remained uppermost in the minds of health care providers, medical equipment manufacturers as well as numerous patients who have been scared about the same fate. Well, the body has succeeded in raising awareness about the dangers of misconnection and introduced a standard for the connectors thereby reducing the dangers substantially.

The training and implementation of the standardized connectors in facilities and other places making use of feeding tubes has been undertaken by GEDSA as well. A three pronged program named imaginatively as ‘Stay Connected’ had been developed by its members with the sole purpose of ensuring safe connections that do not jeopardize the lives of patients!

The move has been appreciated by almost everyone associated with the medical fraternity as well as the top manufacturers supplying the required tubes and connectors as well as syringes to their customers.  What does it mean for the neonate who has to lie in the incubator or supplied with nutrition enterally? Sure, the head of the unit is usually the one to make all decisions regarding feeding of the pre term babies. Unfortunately, choosing a dealer or manufacturer for sourcing the required connectors may not always be foolproof and can end in terrible confusion due to misconnection of the tubes.

GEDSA has arrived as a Godsend by propagating the manufacture of specific connectors that cannot be connected arbitrarily with a different type of tube. It adheres to the ISO statistics pertaining to enteral connectors and has been spreading the word by encouraging all concerned to implement the new connectors that can be found registered under the brand ENFit.

GEDSA’s initiative

• The new connector created by the members of the association meets the standards set by ISO 80369-1 perfectly. It is hoped that the ENFit brand will soon replace the other kinds of connectors that did not prevent misconnections.


• While most of the facilities have awakened to the fact by adopting the new rule and asked their manufacturers to supply the best connectors that are invaluable for protecting the lives of their patients, there are many suppliers as well as healthcare units that are still struggling to phase out the old connectors.


• Adherence to ISO 80369-1 is highly desirable but has not mean mandatory in the states across the United States with California being the only exception.

The ENFit connectors come with a locking system with the syringes coming with a female end and the feeding tubes having a specific male connector that will lock in. However, the Enfit syringe dose error causing dead space has been found lacking when it comes to patient safety. A number of manufacturers have introduced a special low dose syringe that can reduce this error substantially thus making it convenient for use.