Early Oral Feeding Versus Traditional Postoperative Care in Emergency Abdominal Surgery

Hospital General de Agudos "Dr. Cosme Argerich"

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 3

Conditions: Postoperative Care

Treatments: Other: Traditional Care; Other: Early oral feeding

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01084070

ARGERICH1

Details and patient eligibility

About

The traditional postoperative care after abdominal surgery included the need of nasogastric tube, fasting until resumed bowel function and progressive reinstitution of oral intake from liquid to solid diet. Recent studies have shown no benefits of this traditional management over early oral feeding. Nevertheless, the researches in emergency surgery are scarce.

Enrollment: 336 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 14+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patients over 14 years after abdominal emergency surgery.

Exclusion criteria

• Lack of consensus of the patient
• Concurrent extra-abdominal surgery
• Short bowel or other clear indication of parenteral nutrition
• Inability to feed orally (eg, decreased level of consciousness)
• Interventional procedure
• Esophageal surgery
• Reoperations
• Pancreatitis

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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336 participants in 2 patient groups

Early oral feeding

Experimental group

Treatment:

Other: Early oral feeding

Traditional Care

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Other: Traditional Care