The placement of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) is a safe and widely accepted method of artificial enteral nutrition. In Germany, PEG placement is performed approximately 140,000 times a year, about 65% of them in elderly patients. Yet indications for PEG placement in the elderly, as well as the health and functional status of these patients are unexplored in Germany. To draw conclusions about the indication for PEG placement, the health status and the further development of patients undergoing PEG in acute geriatric wards, we performed an analysis of the 2004 annual data set of the German Gemidas database. The Gemidas database is an instrument of voluntary quality assurance, where the treatment data of patients in German geriatric hospital units are registered. Data of 40 acute geriatric hospital units with 27,775 patients and 393 PEG tube placements were analyzed. According to the database items, we received information about the incidence of PEG placement, nutrition-relevant treatment diagnosis, patients age, functional and mental status, length of hospital stay, where patients were admitted from and discharged to and the hospital mortality of geriatric patients with and without PEG placement. In 1.4% of all treatment cases, a PEG was inserted. PEG placement was mainly performed in patients with the treatment diagnosis stroke (65.1%) and dysphagia (64.1%). The functional status of patients with PEG tube placement was very poor, with an Barthel Index of 8.2 (+/- 14.6) points at admission. Due to the severity of the disease and in concordance with existing data the overall hospital mortality of patients undergoing PEG placement was 17.6%, which is higher than in patients without PEG placement (4.3%). In all 27 775 analyzed geriatric patients, a diagnosis related to malnutrition was coded in only 7.0%, although sufficient data show a prevalence of about 50% in elderly hospital patients.