Preoperative patient fasting regimes.

Twenty years ago, Hamilton Smith undertook an extensive research study into the practice of patient fasting times. Data was collected by interviewing nurses and anaesthetists in four hospitals, to ascertain whether individual regimes were planned for patients. The large study looked at a wide range of issues and it was found that 'blanket' fasting was the general practice. Hamilton Smith discovered that, despite research showing that safe fasting times ranged from four to six hours, patients' prepared for surgery in the morning were all fasted from midnight. This sometimes resulted in a starvation period of up to twelve hours. Fasting patients irrespective of individualised time of surgery, does not reflect individual care.