Chewing gum promotes bowel function recovery in elderly patients after lumbar spinal surgery: a retrospective single-center cohort study

Background: Postoperative paralytic ileus is not a rare complication after lumbar spinal surgery especially in elderly patients. Chewing kind of sham feeding that has been reported to stimulate bowel motility, but so far there was no study showed these positive results may or be extrapolated the population. We sought determine whether chewing gum facilitates function recovery patients undergoing spine surgery.