With regards to coma patients or patients otherwise unable to eat for themselves, they will commonly have a feeding tube placed either into their stomach or just past their stomach at the start of the small intestines. Enteral nutrition or “tube feeds” are then usually run 24hrs a day. Lower rates are easier to tolerate. For people that are otherwise active but for a given reason cannot swallow (people who have had a stroke for example), tube feeds can be run faster and intermittently to give them more freedom to move about through the day.