Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Randomised controlled trial
Abdominal massage may decrease gastric residual volumes and abdominal circumference in critically ill patients
  1. Malissa Warren1,2
  1. 1Veterans Administration Portland Health Care System (VAPORHCS);
  2. 2Oregon Health Sciences University General Surgery Department
  1. Correspondence to: Malissa Warren, VAPORHCS, P5NFS, 3710 SW US Veterans Hospital Road, Portland, OR 97207-1034, USA; Malissa.Warren{at}va.gov

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Commentary on: OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed

Implications for practice and research

  • Abdominal massage may decrease gastric residual volumes (GRVs) and abdominal circumference over time in a select medicine critical care unit population.

  • Research and standardisation for the practice of abdominal massage may provide clinicians additional tools for improving overall gastrointestinal (GI) function and feeding in the critically ill.

Context

Bowel dysfunction is common in the critically ill, affecting up to 50% of patients.1 Although early enteral feeding is a primary recommendation for mechanically ventilated critically ill patients it may also be considered a risk factor for aspiration …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.