[Postoperative and enteral feeding following abdominal surgery. Clinical study using a peptide diet]

To assess the value of early postoperative feeding with a chemically defined oligopeptide diet, 20 patients were examined after cholecystectomy. The patients were randomly selected for conventional treatment (water, electrolytes, and carbohydrates by intravenous route) or for feeding with the elementary diet (water, electrolytes, carbohydrates, fat short-chain peptides via a jejunal tube). The clinical and metabolic course of the ten patients fed with the elementary diet was good; they had a positive nitrogen balance by the second postoperative day. The results suggest that enteral tube feeding with a chemically defined oligopeptide diet is possible even in the early postoperative period after gastrointestinal operations and perhaps a definite alternative to parenteral nutrition.