Guidelines for nutrition post trans-oral robotic surgery

New research at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital is investigating ways to improve nutritional care before, during and after head and neck cancer surgery, including for patients who have undergone trans-oral robotic surgery (TORS).

Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital’s Assistant Director of Nutrition and Dietetics Dr Teresa Brown is investigating ways to improve nutritional care for patients before, during and after head and neck cancer surgery

Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital’s Assistant Director of Nutrition and Dietetics Dr Teresa Brown is leading the study alongside a team of dietitians and PhD students.

“As a relatively new treatment, we don’t know much about patients’ nutritional outcomes post-TORS, however the technique is increasing in popularity due to the positive surgical outcomes it provides to patients,” Dr Brown said.

“Our goal is to develop evidence-based guidelines to allow us to support patient’s nutrition intake pre and post-surgery, helping them to maintain their weight and nutritional status and optimising surgical outcomes through implementation of evidence-based practice.”

Previous research has focused on developing guidelines for patients undergoing radiotherapy for head and neck cancer, however, nutrition care for patients undergoing surgery has been identified as an area for improvement.

“Poor nutrition can impact a patient’s wellbeing and quality of life. Providing nutrition care in this patient population will improve wound healing post-surgery, reduce the risk of infections and complications and reduce a patients length of stay in hospital,” Dr Brown said.

“In addition, we suspect our new guidelines will benefit patients undergoing skull-base surgery, as the nature of the surgery means it can be difficult placing feeding tubes post operatively, so patients tend to stay on a liquid diet which is often inadequate to sustain their nutrition overtime.”

This research project is being funded by the Metro North Clinician Research Fellowship scheme and is due to begin in July 2022, with the aim of recruiting 25 patients undergoing TORS from the RBWH’s Ear, Nose, and Throat department from January 2023.