Effect of two oral care protocols on the incidence of stomatitis in hematology patients.

Research-based oral care protocols for the control and treatment of stomatitis secondary to cytotoxic therapy are scarce in the nursing literature. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the efficacy of two different oral care protocols in decreasing the incidence of stomatitis in patients with hematologic malignancies receiving chemotherapy and radiation therapy. It was hypothesized that patients with hematologic malignancies using oral care protocol A would have a lower incidence of treatment-induced stomatitis than patients using oral care protocol B. Eighteen subjects with hematologic malignancies treated with high doses of chemotherapy alone or in combination with radiation therapy were randomly assigned to one of two specific oral care protocols. Protocols differed in the type of lip lubricant, toothette, and mouthwash used. The Oral Assessment Guide (21) was used to assess oral status five times a week for the duration of each subject's hospitalization. A t test for independent samples was used to determine if the difference in the condition of the oral cavity was related to the different oral care treatments. A statistically significant difference was not found between the mean oral assessment scores of the two groups. A trend emerged, however, of a lower incidence of stomatitis in the subjects using the experimental oral care protocol. A serendipitous finding was that reinforcement of oral care instructions and nursing assessments of the oral cavity seemed to promote patient compliance with the oral care regime. A supplementary analysis revealed a statistically significant (r = -0.7177) negative correlation between the degree of stomatitis and the peripheral white blood cell count.