Objective:
Kefir is rich and affective probiotic feeding material with evidence based medical effects. There are many studies about antimicrobial, scatrizant, anticancer effects of Kefir but there is not any study on anastomotic burst pressure and healing effects on intestinal wall around anastomosis in the postoperative period (8). In this study the efficacy of Kefir (Altınkılıç) and Ensure (Abbott) as enteral feeding products as colonic anastomotic healing has been investigated.
Material and Methods:
In this study 40 Wistar-albino female rats were used. Rats were divided into 4groups as sham group (Group A), anastomosis group (Group B), kefir after anastomosis group (Group C), and ensure after anastomosis group (Group D).
Results:
There was no significant difference between the hemoglobin, hematocrit, leukocyte and thrombocyte levels of the groups (p>0.05) whereas there was statistically significant difference between the total protein levels of the groups (p<0.05). In the Kefir group bursting pressure was measured higher than in sham (p:0.003, p<0.01) and anastomosis group (p:0.001, p<0.01). In the Ensure group bursting pressure was measured statistically higher than in sham (p:0.035, p<0.05) and anastomosis (p:0.035, p<0.05) groups. In the sham group hydroxyproline levels were statistically higher than in anastomosis (p:0.001, p<0.01), Kefir (p:0.004, p<0.01) and Ensure (p:0.002, p< 0.01) groups.
Conclusion:
Kefir is currently being used for academically purposes as further clinical studies are needed. With more clinical studies preoperative use of Kefir would reduce postoperative mortality and morbidity rates.
Keywords: Colonic anastomosis, enteral feeding, Kefir