Optimised Recovery With Accelerated Nutrition and GI Enhancement
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2008-08-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Factors which delay recovery following uncomplicated abdominal surgery include uncontrolled
pain, intolerance of diet and poor mobility. Enhanced recovery after Surgery (ERAS)
programmes are perioperative care pathways that address systematically these issues (i.e.
improved dynamic pain relief, optimised nutritional care and enforced mobilisation) to
promote a faster recovery and a shorter stay. The key treatments that improve outcome within
an ERAS programme are not known. Moreover there are few acceptable, objective endpoints to
assess key outcome variables such as return of GI function. This randomised trial will assess
the potential synergy between early recovery of GI function (laxation) and early
postoperative oral nutritional support(with associated preoperative preconditioning using
carbohydrate/fluid loading). The main overall outcome targets being improved recovery of
gastrointestinal function, postoperative nutritional status and physical function. It will
validate the use of a novel, objective technique to measure gastric motility (surrogate for
GI function). Such refinement of ERAS should result in shorter hospital stay and better use
of limited health care resource.