Abstract
Background: Early postoperative feeding is recommended recently even after abdominal surgery. We tried early postoperative feeding after elective abdominal aortic surgery with a transperitoneal or retroperitoneal approach. Methods: A semisolid diet was given to 108 patients 2 or 3 days after elective abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery. A transperitoneal approach was used for 90 patients and a retroperitoneal approach was used for 18 patients. There was no significant difference between the two patient groups in terms of age, gender, operation time, bleeding, or postoperative period to semisolid diet intake (2.5±0.5 day after transperitoneal approach and 2.4±0.5 day after retroperitoneal approach). The amount of diet intake was recorded at each meal and the postoperative diet intake pattern was classified into good diet intake and poor diet intake types retrospectively. Results: Fifty patients after transperitonal operation (56%) and 13 patients after retroperitoneal operation (72%) were classified as good diet intake type (NS). A half amount of diet intake was possible 3.4±2.4 postoperative day after the transperitoneal approach and 2.8±0.8 postoperative day after retroperitoneal approach (NS). Vomiting was observed in 6 patients after transperitoneal (7%) and none after retroperitoneal operation (NS). Nasogastric tube insertion was not necessary in every patient. After transperitoneal operation, there was no significant difference in age, gender, postoperative semisolid diet intake day, operation time, bleeding and preoperative risk factors between patients with good and poor diet intake. Conclusion: Early postoperative diet intake was possible even after transperitoneal abdominal aortic aneurysm operation. No specific factors were observed related to poor diet intake in patients who underwent abdominal aortic aneurysm operation with transperitoneal approach.
