Special Diets During Surgery
Proper foods are as important as proper medicines in helping a patient recover from surgery. Despite the common complaints about hospital meals, the nutrients that are provided in certain special diets for surgical patients are as carefully prescribed and prepared as are some medications that are served in pill of capsule form.
Surgical nutrition has become increasingly important in recent years because of an awareness by physicians that an operation, minor or major, is not unlike an organic disease that creates physiological stresses and a nutritional imbalance in the patient’s body. To help compensate for alterations in the patient’s physiology as it recovers from the effects of surgery, special diets may be ordered.
A bland soft diet is frequently ordered for patients who are unable to handle a regular diet but whose condition is not serious enough to require a liquid diet. The foods are selected because they are low in cellulose and connective tissue; they are bland, smooth, and easily digested. The choice of food, nevertheless, represents as great a variety as one might be served in a restaurant or home, except for an absence of spices and other substances that would be stimulating to the gastrointestinal tract. Included in the surgical soft diet might be lean meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk, mild cheese, cooked tender or pureed fruits and vegetables, refined cereals and bread with butter or margarine, plus gelatin desserts, puddings, custards, and ice cream.
Liquid diet for surgical patients may be prepared with or without milk. They are usually ordered for patients with impaired function of the gastrointestinal tract. A liquid diet without milk may include a cereal gruel made with water, clear bullion or broth, gelatin, strained fruit juice, and coffee or tea. Liquid diets with milk are similar but may also include creamed soups, sherbets, ice cream, cereal gruel made with milk instead of water, cocoa and beverages of milk or cream. Beverage options permitted are tomato juice and some carbonated beverages such as ginger ale.
Following rectal surgery, and other procedures in which it is necessary to prevent bowel movements for a person for several days, a low residue diet (or minimal residue diet) might offer eggs, poached or boiled, rice, soda crackers, cereals made with water, butter, bullion, or clear broths, carbonated beverages, tea, coffee, and certain meats, including oysters, sweetbreads, and tender bits of beef or veal. An alternative low residue diet is the bland soft diet with all-milk containing items eliminated.
Gallbladder surgical patients may expect modified fat diet that eliminates
as much as possible fats and gas-producing food items. It includes foods
that provide protein and carbohydrate sources of energy to replace fats and
includes primarily fish, poultry, lean cuts of beef, cottage cheese, cereal
products and bread, and certain fruits and vegetables.