1. An unblinded randomised controlled trial of preoperative oral supplements in colorectal cancer patients
- Author
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James Hill, Jonathan Shaffer, Chris Todd, Malcolm Campbell, and Sorrel Burden
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,Nutrition and Dietetics ,Colorectal cancer ,business.industry ,Medicine (miscellaneous) ,Subgroup analysis ,Perioperative ,Odds ratio ,medicine.disease ,Surgery ,law.invention ,Randomized controlled trial ,Weight loss ,law ,Internal medicine ,Cohort ,medicine ,medicine.symptom ,Complication ,business - Abstract
Background: Perioperative oral supplementation has been shown to reduce post-operative complications. However, the use of preoperative standard oral supplements in a cohort of colorectal cancer patients has not been evaluated. The present study examined whether preoperative supplements are beneficial in this group. Methods: In a randomised controlled trial, patients were assigned to receive 400 mL of oral supplement and dietary advice or dietary advice alone. Primary outcome was the number of post-operative complications. One hundred and twenty-five patients were recruited (59 randomised to the intervention group and 66 to the control group) and nine were excluded. Results: In the intervention group, 24 (44%) patients had a complication compared to 26 (42%) in the control group (P = 0.780). In the intervention and control groups, there were eight (15%) and 16 (25%) surgical site infections, respectively (P = 0.140) and seven (13%) and 11 (17%) chest infections, respectively (P = 0.470). Subgroup analysis for hypothesis generation included 83 (71%) weight-losing patients, where there was a significant reduction in surgical site infections using the Buzby definition (P = 0.034), although this was not the case for the Centre for Disease Control definition (P = 0.052). Conclusions: There was no evidence that preoperative supplements were beneficial in reducing the number of complications, although there may be some benefit for surgical site infections in selected weight-losing preoperative
- Published
- 2011