Abstract

Oral mucositis continues to be a major complaint of patients who have chemotherapy for the acute leukemia. An innovative and inexpensive remedy which produces favorable results for those afficted is not yet introduced. 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. The one is sodium bicarbonate-normal saline gargling, and the other consists of chlorhexidine gargling. This quasi-experimental study was performed to compare the efficacy of these two different oral care protocols. Twenty subjects were assigned to one of the two specific diagnosis of leukemia, aim of the chemotherapy. The Oral Assessment Guide(OAG), the Beck's perception of oral comfort, WHO Grading system fot mucositis 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 Neutrophil Count(ANC) reached 1,000. It continued about 2-4 weeks. The data analyzed by Mann-Whittney U test and ANCOVA. The result was follows as: The patient who used sodium bicarbonate-normal saline gargling showed significantly higher mean score of the discomfort of oral gargling solution than chlorhexidine gargling. The other scores were not significantly different between two groups. However the subjects using the sodium bicarbonate-normal saline gargling showed a lower level of oral mucositis. We concluded that oral using sodium bicarbonate-normal saline gargling was between to reduce the level of oral mucositis during chemotherapy and nursing assessments of the oral cavity seemed to promote patient's compliance with the oral care regimen.