Research

Mixed

Postoperative oral dietary supplementation in patients undergoing elective gastrointestinal surgery significantly reduces postoperative complications and preserves nutritional status during the inpatient phase.

If you are having major stomach or bowel surgery, ask your medical team about providing you with oral nutritional supplements (like Fortisip) while you are in the hospital. Drinking these supplements between meals, as much as you can tolerate, can help you keep your strength, lose less weight, and significantly lower your risk of getting infections or other complications after the operation. However, continuing these supplements at home after you are discharged does not appear to provide additional benefits for your weight or well-being.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
The prescription of oral dietary supplements to patients who have undergone gastrointestinal surgery results in clinically significant benefits. These benefits, however, are restricted to the inpatient phase.
A. Keele et al. · Gut · 1997

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with clear statistical significance (p<0.05) for complications and weight loss, though limited to a single center and specific surgical population.

Source

Two phase randomised controlled clinical trial of postoperative oral dietary supplements in surgical patients.

A. Keele et al. · Gut · 1997

DOI 10.1136/gut.40.3.393

rct · n=100Cited 202×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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