People who have to undergo surgery at UMC Utrecht can continue to drink until just before the procedure. Normally this is not allowed prior to a medical procedure.
The hospital has conducted research into adjusting the guideline in recent years and is sticking to the new working method. In its own words, the UMC in Domstad is the first hospital to allow patients to continue drinking until just before surgery.
According to the applicable guidelines, people should stop drinking two hours before an operation, explains Marije Marsman, an anesthesiologist at UMC Utrecht. Stomach contents can end up in the lungs during anesthesia. Those rules for children have already been adjusted.
Children quickly feel bad if they do not consume fluids and sugars for a while, says Marsman. They can therefore continue to drink until just before an operation. “But adults are not very different from children,” the Utrecht doctors found.
In 2019, UMC Utrecht changed the working method. Adults were also allowed to drink from that moment until surgery. In the following years, the hospital collected data from about 16,000 patients. It turns out, as the doctors already thought, just as safe, since fluids are quickly removed from the stomach. And patients feel better after surgery.
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