Prevention of post-operative nausea and vomiting with honey as a pre-operative oral carbohydrate: A randomised controlled pilot trial

Abstract

Background: Post-operative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is a common post-operative complication. Prolonged pre-operative fasting is common in Australia despite guidelines recommending reduced fasting to improve patient outcomes, such as PONV. Commercially prepared oral carbohydrate (OC) drinks may be used to reduce fasting time. In this study these were replaced with honey, an inexpensive and common food item.

Design: Partially blinded, four parallel arms randomised controlled noninferiority trial compared pre-operative OC loading with overnight fasting.

Methods: Adult elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy and thyroidectomy patients having two or more risk factors for PONV were allocated into intervention and control groups by simple randomisation. The intervention group ingested 60g of honey in 100 ml water at least two hours before surgery as pre-operative OC loading to reduce PONV. Participants were blinded to study outcomes and assessors to group assignment. Early PONV (0–6 hours) was measured with Rhodes index of nausea, vomiting and retching (R-INVR) and a numeric rating scale (NRS).

Results: The four groups (N = 142) were control and intervention groups of thyroidectomy patients (n = 72: C = 37, I = 35), and control and intervention groups of laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients (n = 70: C = 37, I = 33) and had similar distributions of variables. The estimated effect size was 140 with a 95 percent confidence interval. The PONV incidence (Pearson χ2 = 4.54; df = 1; p = 0.03) and severity were significantly lower in the laparoscopic cholecystectomy intervention group (R-INVR: Mann–Whitney U = 446.5; p = 0.01; NRS: Mann–Whitney U = 444.5; p = 0.01) and results were not conclusive in the thyroidectomy group (NRS: Mann–Whitney U = 629.5; p = 0.95; R-INVR: Mann–Whitney U = 629.5; p = 0.76).

Conclusion: Honey could be recommended as an inexpensive pre-operative OC to reduce PONV in adult patients receiving general anaesthesia.