Seyde Sedighe Yosefi, Omid Sadeghpour, Farnaz Sohrabvand, Zoleikha Atarod, Mohammad Askarfarashah, Tayebe Rastegar Ateni and Nafiseh Hoseini Yekta
Ileus is a major problem after surgery. It is painful, causes abdominal distension, delays resumption of oral intake of food and recovery and increases the duration of hospitalization.According to Iranian traditional medicine principles one of the causes for ileus is accumulation of gas in the intestines. The present study investigated the effect of the Carum carvi plant, a gas solvent, on resumption of bowel motility after Cesarean section. This was a randomized controlled pilot study conducted on 20 women undergoing elective caesarean section under general anesthesia. The patients were randomly divided into two groups. The intervention group (Group A) drank 10 ml of Carum carvi syrup containing 2 g of Carum carvi in 20 ml of syrup at 8 to 81/2 hours after surgery. The control group (Group B) consisted of 10 patients who drank 10 ml of the placebo syrup at 8 to 81/2 hours after surgery. Demographic characteristics, time of first peristaltic sounds, first gas passage, first bowel movement, and time until hospital discharge were compared for the two groups. Patients in both groups were of similar age and BMI, had the same number of previous pregnancies, and fasted for similar periods of time before surgery. They had surgeries of similar length, received similar care before and after surgery, and were given the same anesthesia. The results showed that compared to the control group, the intervention group had significantly shorter mean interval of the first intestinal sounds (10.0 ± 2.03 h vs. 19.28 ± 3.95 h); mean time to first passage of flatus (15.91 ± 3.73 h vs. 26.82 ± 5.83 h), mean time to first bowel movement (20.31 ± 4.63 h vs. 31.7 ± 10.2 h) and mean length of hospitalization (31.71 ± 7.57 h vs. 50.6 ± 16.49 h) (p < 0.05). There were no serious side effects associated with consumption of the syrup. The use of a gas solvent such as Carum carvi after caesarean section can speed the resumption of post-operative bowel motility.
