Investigation of Preoperative Fasting Time and Preoperative and Postoperative Well-Being of Patients

AIM: This study aimed to investigate the preoperative fasting time and preoperative and postoperative well-being of patients. METHOD: This is a descriptive study. In Istanbul, between January and June 2016, 130 patients from the Training and Research Hospital Urology Clinic were included in the study. In collecting the data of the research, the information form, which included the descriptive features and surgical intervention information of the patients, and together with the scale of “Quality of Recovery-40 Questions (QoR-40)” was used. Mean, Standard Deviation, Median, Frequency, Ratio, Minimum, Maximum, Students’ t-Test, Mann Whitney U-test, Paired Samples T-Test, Pearson and Spearman’s Correlation Analysis were used for data analysis. RESULTS: The mean age was 57.48 ± 11.12, 79.2% of the patients were male and 63.8% of them underwent robotic prostatectomy. It was observed that the mean of times for preoperative fasting, solid foods, liquid foods were 11.26 ± 2.17, 12.56 ± 2.47, 11.26 ± 2.17 hours. The percent score of patients who felt hungry, thirsty, and dryness of the mouth was 30.8, 48.5, and 40, respectively, and patients had complaints such as nausea, fatigue, and feeling anxious before surgery. CONCLUSION: It was determined that patients were still hungry after midnight until surgery and remained hungry for a long time. The preoperative and postoperative well-being was adversely affected; however, there was no statistically significant relationship between the preoperative fasting time and postoperative well-being of patients, duration of hospitalization (p > .05).