THE INFLUENCE OF SOYFIBRE SUPPLEMENTED TUBE-FEEDING ON THE OCCURRENCEOF DIARRHEA IN POSTOPERATIVE-PATIENTS

We investigated the occurrence of diarrhoea in postoperative patients on tube feeding, with or without soyfibre supplementation. The patient s also received antibiotic treatment. 60 postoperative patients were a ssigned to either a fibre free formula diet (FFF) or a soyfibre supple mented formula diet (SSF). The tube feeding was supplied continuously through a nasogastric or a jejunal tube (mean volume 1775 ml a day). T he consistency and frequency of the bowel evacuations were recorded fo r a period of 5 days. A daily diarrhoea score (DS) was obtained by add ing a consistency score (formed stools 1, loose 3, and watery 5 points ) for every evacuation. The major finding of this study is that the to tal DS of the FFF group was 1.7 times higher than the SSF group (ANOVA , p = 0.05). We conclude that soyfibre enriched tube feeding has a ben eficial and significant influence on the occurrence of diarrhoea in a selected group of postoperative patients.