Effect of Postoperative Oral Rinsing on Dehydration-Related Discomfort, Comfort, and Bowel Movement

Plain-language summary

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of oral rinsing with water in the postoperative period on thirst, comfort level, and bowel motility in patients undergoing abdominal surgery under general anesthesia. This study was conducted as a randomized controlled trial with pretest-posttest design, including intervention and control groups. It was carried out between June 2024 and December 2024 with patients undergoing elective abdominal surgery. Sample size was calculated using G\*Power 3.1.9.7 software, with an effect size of 0.50, α=0.05, and power=0.85. A total of 82 participants (41 per group) were initially planned, and considering a 10% data loss, the study was completed with 98 participants (49 in each group). Patients were stratified according to their diagnoses and randomized in a 1:1 ratio using block randomization with a random number table. Three data collection forms were used. SPSS 22.00 package program was used to analyze the data. Skewnes-Kurtosis analyses were performed to determine the conformity of the data to a normal distribution. Frequency (n) and percentage (%) distributions were calculated to determine the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of the participants. A t-test for independent samples was used to determine the mean differences between two independent groups, a t-test for dependent samples was used to compare pre- and post-intervention measurements, and a single-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for repeated measures. Cohen's d effect size was calculated to assess the significance of the difference between the groups in terms of the intervention. Statistical significance was accepted as p\<0.05.

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