Abstract

Because the oral mucositis is often inevitable in acute leukemia patients during chemotherapy, the efforts must be made to keep these leuekmia patients from oral mucositis. So we tried to develop two oral care protocols for reducing the level of oral mucositis during cytotoxic therapy through literature review and our clinical experience. This quasi-experimental study was performed to compare the prohpylatic value of these oral care protocols. Thirty-seven subjects were assigned to one of three groups. The first group performed bivon-normal saline gargling protocol, the second group performed chlorhexidine gargling protocol, and the last contrast group kept traditional gargling protocol, The Oral Assessment Guide(OAG), the Beck's perception of oral comfort, and the discomfort of oral gargling solution were used to assess oral status and subject's oral discomfort during chemotherapy. Each subjects were observed daily from the start of the chemotherapy until Absolute Nertrophil Count (ANC) reached 1,000/mm3. It continued about 2-4 weeks. The data were analyzed by ANCOVA and Kruskal-Wallis oneway ANOVA. The results were as follows : The control group showed significantly highest mean score of the OAG and Beck's perception of oral discomfort among three groups. However the mean score of OAG and Beck's perception of oral discomfort were not significantly different, the bivon saline group showed significantly lowest mean scores among three groups. In conclusion, we recommend that nurses who care acute leukemia patients use bivon-normal saline gargling protocol to reduce the level of oral mucositis during chemotherapy.