Many patients have their last drink the night before an operation or examination under sedation. However, studies have long shown that a long period without liquid intake can actually be a risk factor for complications after surgery.
That is why the anaesthetists at our hospital, along with all the surgical and interventional departments, have introduced 'Fasting Cards'. These allow patients to remain hydrated until they are called for an operation or examination.
The Fasting Cards are freely available. Anyone can use the cards and adapt them to the design of their own health facility. To ensure this remains the case, we have licensed the cards under the following international Creative Commons licence (details below):
Fasting Cards © 2024 by Anne Rüggeberg and Eike Nickel is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
The benefits are many. Allowing water and clear liquids until just before surgery:
- Increases patient safety and reduces postoperative complications,
- Reduces discomfort, hunger and thirst,
- Avoids dehydration,
- Reduces the feeling of stress in patients
- Reduces insulin resistance
- May stabilise blood pressure
- May facilitate the insertion of venous lines
- Reduces post-operative nausea, vomiting and pain.
2. Unrestricted drinking before surgery - a structured patient 2023 (Rüggeberg | Nickel)
Review open access | ScienceDirect
Reference: BJAO_100282 Preoperative fasting and the risk of pulmonary aspiration
ESAIC Newsletter
News from the ESAIC Guideline Task Force on Perioperative Fasting in Adults - ESAIC
Reference: https://esaic.org/news-from-the-esaic-guideline-task-force-on-perioperative-fasting-in-adults/
Fasting cards: Lecture and presentation
Lecture "Unrestricted drinking before surgery using fasting"
Presentation "Unrestricted drinking before surgery using fasting cards"
1. Introducing Fasting Cards - How we did it
2. SOP Fasting before surgery
3. Card printing specifications
Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 means:
You are free to:
- Share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt, remix, transform and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
- Attribution - You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- NonCommercial - You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- ShareAlike - If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- No additional restrictions - You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
See the following link for details of this Creative Commons licence: Creative Commons
You can create your own Fasting Card based on your native language and the languages most of your patients speak.
How to do it:
1. ) Select your native language, download the PowerPoint file and select pages 1, 3 and 5 for the front of your cards.
2.) For the back of your cards, download the PowerPoint file for the languages you need and select pages 2, 4 and 6. You will always find English as the first position and the selected language in the second position. The third and fourth positions are in English. Copy and paste the text blocks of the other two languages from the corresponding PowerPoint files into the third and fourth positions of your cards. See next figure:
How to create your fasting card graphic
3.) You can adapt the design of the cards to match the corporate design of your hospital or company.
4.) Create a printable PDF for offset printing.
5.) See "Card printing specifications" in the section "Information for hospitals interested in the Fasting Cards concept".
Download the fasting card in your language:
We don't have your language?
- Help us create it!
- Download the front of the cards in English (s. below).
- Translate them into your language
- Send it back to us and we will be happy to publish it.
(Please send it to: anne.rueggeberg@helios-gesundheit.de)
Fasting card for translation in your language
It's great that you can easily stick to the 2-hour liquid fast!
Why don't you measure it?
"If you don't take a temperature, you can't find a fever ..."
Samuel Shem, The House of God
