NCT03931395

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

Evaluation of Honey as Adjunct Therapy to Tylenol and Motrin in Treating Post-Operative Pain and Nausea Following Tonsillectomy

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 230 (actual)
• Sponsor: Vanderbilt University Medical Center · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 2 Years – 17 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

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

Type	Name	Description
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

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-04-16
• Primary completion: 2020-09-23
• Completion: 2020-09-23
• First posted: 2019-04-30
• Last updated: 2021-04-01

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States