The Impact of Early Ambulation in the Pediatric Postoperative Appendectomy Patient

Abstract: The purposes of this study were to quantify the mean time to ambulate in a population of pediatric postoperative appendectomy patients at a stand-alone children’s hospital and to identify the associations between mean time to ambulate with admitting floor, patient age, pain medication, occurrence of nausea and vomiting, and length of stay. For decades, it has been suggested that extended immobilization in the postoperative patient should be avoided. Scant literature is available addressing early ambulation for pediatric patients after appendectomy. In practice, we noted that patients are not routinely ambulated early. Data were gathered from a retrospective review of 300 pediatric appendectomy patient charts at a children’s hospital. The mean time to ambulate was 16.05 hours (95% CI [14.14, 17.96]). The mean time to ambulate for patients placed on the surgical specialty unit was 13.48 (95% CI [11.90, 15.07]), compared with 20.36 hours for patients admitted to overflow units (95% CI [16.97, 25.36], p
Source: Journal of Pediatric Surgical Nursing - Category: Nursing Tags: Case Report Source Type: research