Project ID: 101360; HREC/2023/MNHA/101360; Gastric Emptying of Jelly

When fasting before operations or procedures that involve sedation/anaesthesia, patients are asked to fast so as to reduce the risk of a severe complication known as 'pulmonary aspiration of gastric contents'. This is when stomach contents come back up the food pipe and get breathed into the lungs of an unconscious patient. Foodstuffs have different recommended fasting times based on how long they stay in the stomach before they are emptied into the small intestine (i.e. six-hour fast for solids, two-hour fast for clear fluids). Different health organizations and professional medical bodies have varying recommendations as to whether jelly should be treated as a clear fluid (with a two-hour fast) or as a solid (with a six-hour fast). There are many published studies that describe the gastric emptying of a variety of foods and fluids – however there are no published studies that describe the gastric emptying of jelly. Our objective is to measure and describe the rate of gastric emptying of jelly in a small group of healthy adult volunteers. Volunteers will fast overnight, eat 400 mL of jelly, and then the volume of their stomach will be assessed by gastric ultrasound every 10 minutes until the jelly has passed into the small intestine (which should take 2-3 hours).