TUESDAY, Feb. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Patients who regularly chew gum after colon surgery have speedier recoveries than those who do not, and gum chewing may be a potentially inexpensive adjunct to postoperative care, according to a report in the February issue of the Archives of Surgery.
Rob Schuster, M.D., of the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in California, and colleagues studied 34 patients undergoing elective open sigmoid resections for recurrent diverticulitis or cancer.
Seventeen patients were randomized into a group that chewed sugarless gum three times a day for an hour each time until they were discharged. Another 17 patients acted as controls.
The researchers found that the first passage of flatus occurred 65.4 hours after surgery in the gum-chewing group and 80.2 hours after in the control group. The first bowel movement took place 63.2 hours after surgery in the gum-chewing group, versus 89.4 hours later in the control group. Length of hospital stay was 4.3 days in the gum-chewing group, versus 6.8 among controls.
"Gum chewing speeds recovery after elective open sigmoid resection by stimulating bowel motility," the authors write. "Gum chewing is an inexpensive and helpful adjunct to postoperative care after colectomy."
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