Chewing gum as a form of sham feeding is an inexpensive and well - tolerated means of promoting gastrointestinal motility following major abdominal surgery ¹. A meta - analysis done by Mei et al., showed that chewing gum after colorectal cancer surgery is helpful for the recovery of the patient associated with the reduction of the time to first passage of flatus, first bowel movement, start of feeding and the length of postoperative hospital stay ².

Chewing gum has been reported to enhance gut motility and contribute to improvement of postoperative ileus after abdominal surgery ³. 

With regards to whether chewing gum for 30 minutes preoperatively influences the outcome of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, we recruited a total of 195 patients between November 1, 2022 to May 31, 2024 for this study with 25 patients dropping out of this study - 15 from "No Gum", 10 from "Chewing Gum" - leaving 170 patients who were randomly assigned to either group.

We were able to observe the following results:

• Chewing gum 30 minutes prior to Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy decreases the use of nasogastric tubes
• Promotes a decrease in duration of hospitalization and decreases operative time
• No difference in scale of pain/discomfort
• Adds no significant costs to the patients

We're excited to have our study registered to ISRCTN with the potential to have it published!

And we'd love to invite other surgeons that perform upper abdominal surgeries to perform this research.

References:

1.           Roslan F, Kushairi A, Cappuyns L, Daliya P, Adiamah A. The Impact of Sham Feeding with Chewing Gum on Postoperative Ileus Following Colorectal Surgery: a Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. J Gastrointest Surg. 2020 Nov;24(11):2643-2653. doi: 10.1007/s11605-019-04507-3. Epub 2020 Feb 26. PMID: 32103455; PMCID: PMC7595968.
2. Binbin Mei, Wenting Wang, Feifei Cui, Zunjia Wen, Meifen Shen, "Chewing Gum for Intestinal Function Recovery after Colorectal Cancer Surgery: A Systematic Review and MetaAnalysis", Gastroenterology Research and Practice, vol. 2017, Article ID 3087904, 13 pages, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/3087904
3. Bouvet L, Loubradou E., Desgranges F – P., Chassard D.. Effect of Gum Chewing on Gastric Volume and Emptying: A Prospective Randomized Crossover Study. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 119 (5): 928 – 33 (2017). doi: 10.1093/bja/aex270