Coffee intake not linked to first bowel movement post laparoscopic colectomy

There is no link between caffeine and a shorter time to the first bowel movement, says an article published in British Journal of Surgery. 

Coffee is a popular beverage that is enjoyed by many individuals from various cultures and is frequently linked to improved bowel function. After colorectal surgery, postoperative ileus is a common issue that considerably lengthens hospital stays and raises perioperative expenditures. Although the mechanism is unknown, it has been proposed that coffee may aid postoperative gastrointestinal motility. So Fariba Abbassi and crew undertook this study to see if coffee accelerated the time to bowel movement following laparoscopic colectomy.

This was a single-center, randomized, placebo-controlled superiority study that was double-blinded (October 2015 to August 2020). At least 18-year-old patients having elective laparoscopic colectomy were given a randomly assigned dose of 100 mg, 200 mg, or a placebo (250 mg of corn starch) three times a day. The time to the first bowel movement served as the main goal. Colonic transit time, the amount of time it took for a person to tolerate solid meals, the length of hospital stay, and perioperative morbidity were all secondary outcomes.

The key findings of this study were:

Sixty patients were randomly allocated to the placebo group, the 200-mg caffeine group, or the 100-mg caffeine group (20). 

The mean(s.d.) time to the first bowel movement in the 200-mg caffeine group was 67.9(19.2) hours, in the 100-mg caffeine group it was 68.2(32.2) hours, and in the placebo group it was 67.3(22.7) hours (P = 0.887) in the intention-to-treat analysis. 

No discernible change with caffeine was seen in the intestinal transit time analysis and per-protocol analysis.

In conclusion, the findings of this study clearly states no such direct association of caffeine intake and its effect on post laparoscopic colectomy. 

Reference: 

Abbassi, F., Müller, S. A., Steffen, T., Schmied, B. M., Warschkow, R., Beutner, U., & Tarantino, I. (2022). Caffeine for intestinal transit after laparoscopic colectomy: randomized clinical trial (CaCo trial). In British Journal of Surgery (Vol. 109, Issue 12, pp. 1216–1223). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/bjs/znac265