ABSTRACT

 Background: Appendicectomy is one of the most common general surgical procedure performed under general anesthesia and there is apprehension about time to resume oral feeding. Traditionally oral feeding is not resumed until bowel sounds are returned and patient has passed flatus. This leads to prolonged periods of fast, overall increased hospital stay and cost. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the outcomes of resuming early oral feeding immediately after 06 hours versus traditional method of resuming oral feeding in terms of bowel sounds, first flatus, vomiting and hospital stay.

Methods: This randomized controlled clinical trial was designed to compare the outcomes in cases with early vs delayed oral feeding after appendicectomy at Department of Surgery, Sahara Medical College, Narowal from01-01-2017 to 01-12-2017. In this study the cases undergoing appendicectomy under general anesthesia were selected. The cases in group A were started with oral feed 6 hours after surgery (early) and those in group B with oral intake on next post-operative day (delayed). Then these cases were followed for various outcomes.

Results: In this present study there were 60 cases in each group with mean age of 23.67±4.57 vs 22.61±4.71 in group A and B respectively. Mean time for first liquid was 6.13±0.43 vs 26.39±2.31 hours and mean time for solid was 22.77±3.11 vs 31.73±4.19 hours in early (A) vs delayed (B) groups respectively. There was significantly lesser time for first bowel sound, first flatus and time for ambulation in group A as compared to group B. Mean hospital stay in group A and B was 2.03±0.31 vs 3.95±1.11 days with p= 0.001. Conclusion: Early feeding is better than traditional late feeding and this difference is significantly better in terms of mean ambulation time, appearance of first bowel sound, time for first flatus and mean hospital stay.

Keywords: Early, Delayed feeding, bowel sound, hospital stay, appendicectomy