People who are due to undergo surgery at UMC Utrecht can continue to drink until shortly before the procedure. This is normally not allowed before a medical procedure.
The hospital has conducted research to adjust the guidelines in recent years and will stick to the new way of working. In his own words, UMC Domstad is the first hospital that allows patients to continue drinking until shortly before surgery.
According to applicable guidelines, people should stop drinking two hours before an operation, explains Marije Marsman, anesthetist at UMC Utrecht. Stomach contents can end up in the lungs during anesthesia. Those rules for children have already been adjusted.
Kids feel sick right away if they don’t consume liquids and sugars for a while, says Marsman. They can then continue drinking until just before an operation. “But adults are not much different from children,” the Utrecht doctors found.
In 2019, UMC Utrecht changed its working method. Adults were also allowed to drink from then until the surgery. Over the next several years, the hospital collected data from approximately 16,000 patients. It turns out, as the doctors already thought, just as safe, as liquids are quickly removed from the stomach. And patients feel better after surgery.
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