Honey Used as Adjunct Therapy to Tylenol for Post-Op Tonsillectomy Patients

Summary

Tonsillectomies are the second most common surgery with over half a million procedures in the United States for 2006. Tonsillectomies are considered a painful surgical procedure performed on children resulting in pain and nausea/vomiting for up to 7 days postoperatively. Up until recently, doctors have been prescribing upwards of ten days' worth of opioid pain medication for children following tonsillectomies due to the high incidence of pain expected afterwards. Effective July 1st, 2018, new laws regarding opioid restrictions came into place that restricted doctor's abilities to write for more than three days' worth of opioid pain medication without having to fill out sizeable amounts of additional paperwork. This law was put in place to combat the ongoing opioid epidemic that plagues this country. What the investigators are left with for the treatment of pain following these procedures are simply Tylenol and Motrin with a limited amount of opioid. With this being considered a highly painful surgery with a difficult recovery, more options are needed to effectively treat pain and reduce the incidence of emergency room visits and phone calls to the clinic regarding pain control in the postoperative period.

Studies in Europe have shown that honey is an effective adjunct treatment option in the reduction of pain in pediatric postoperative tonsillectomies. These studies are few and far between and more research needs to be conducted to validate these claims particularly in the United States where research on this subject has been extremely limited. Further, the extent to which families and health care providers in the United States would be receptive to using honey for children's postoperative pain is unclear since honey is considered a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) intervention.

Conditions

• Tonsillectomy

Interventions

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Honey

Will give patients and families included in the honey standard of care group 40 packets of hospital approved honey to implement in the tonsillectomy post-operative care of the child

OTHER

Standard of Care

Patients will receive standard post operative medications per surgeon

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Elizabeth Card, MSN · Nursing Research Consultant

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

2 Years

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-04-16

Primary Completion

2020-09-23

Completion

2020-09-23

Countries

• United States

Study Locations