What are the postoperative care measures for rectal cancer surgery

Rectal cancer is a very common malignant tumor, which has a great impact on us. Generally, the treatment of rectal cancer basically relies on surgical therapy, and drug therapy is no longer effective. However, cancer cells will metastasize, which requires everyone to pay enough attention. Let's learn about the postoperative care of rectal cancer patients.

Patients with rectal cancer need to fast for 34 days right after surgery. After intestinal peristalsis is restored and anal gas is discharged (artificial anal gas discharge means bubbles overflowing from the fistula), they can eat liquid food. After 1 week, patients with rectal cancer can eat semi-liquid food. After about two weeks, patients with rectal cancer can eat easily digestible and low-residue food to reduce the burden on the intestine and facilitate the healing of the anastomosis.

In order to prevent the feces discharged from the artificial anus from having a foul odor, rectal cancer patients should eat foods such as yogurt and lotus root powder, and avoid foods such as eggs, garlic, onions, and shrimps to prevent the production of odor after food digestion and absorption.

When the perineum wound of rectal cancer patients is infected or cracked after surgery, 1:5000 potassium permanganate can be used for warm water sitz bath twice a day, and the dressing should be changed after sitz bath. It is helpful to reduce or eliminate the congestion, inflammation, edema and pain of the perineum and anus, keep it clean and comfortable, prevent wound infection and promote wound healing.

For patients with rectal cancer, a colostomy is opened 23 days after surgery. First, clean the skin around the stoma with a saline cotton ball and apply zinc oxide ointment to prevent the excreted stool from soaking the skin and causing dermatitis. When the stool is formed and regular, the skin can be washed with water only and kept dry.

The bag changing method is very important in nursing. Since the artificial anus does not have the contraction function of the normal anus, patients with rectal cancer have no feeling and cannot control their bowel movements in the early stage, so they use an artificial anus bag. When changing the bag, patients with rectal cancer should sit down, and the feces in the bag should be emptied and cleaned in time to avoid infection and reduce odor; when removing the anal bag, it should be gently lifted from the upper ring to prevent skin damage.

This is the end of the introduction to postoperative care for patients with rectal cancer. Suffering from rectal cancer is a very uncomfortable thing, but once you are sick, you must receive timely treatment, which can be of some help to us. I hope the above information can be of some help to you.