• Home
  • Shelter Med 101
    • COVID-19 Resources
    • Top Five
    • Shelter Standards
    • Textbooks
    • Shelter Education
    • Top Webinars
    • Spay-Neuter Resources
    • Trap, Neuter, Return
    • Medical Protocols
    • Practice Guidelines
    • Position statements
  • Organizations
    • Canadian Sheltering
    • Canadian Vet and Tech
    • U.S. Sheltering
  • Events
    • Event Calendar
    • Event List
  • CE Archives
  • Members
    • Member Login
    • Join or Renew
    • Manage Account
    • Committee Sign-Up
    • Members Directory
    • Membership Map
    • Official Documents
  • About
    • About
    • Partners
    • Leadership
    • Contact Us
Join Today! Member Login

Upcoming Events

  • Behavior Job-Alike
    Thu Mar 30 2023, 11:00 EDT - 12:00 EDT
  • Animal Care Expo
    Mon Apr 3 2023 - Thu Apr 6 2023
  • Behavior Job-Alike
    Thu Apr 27 2023, 11:00 EDT - 12:00 EDT
Donate

CASCMA Blog

  • Protected: What Does a Positive PCR Really Mean? Lessons From Ringworm, Parvo, Panleukopenia And COVID-19 March 16, 2023
  • Beyond “Doing Better”: Ordinal Rating Scales to Monitor Behavioural Indicators in Well-Being of Cats February 28, 2023
  • Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease: What Shelter Practitioners Need to Know January 9, 2023
  • There’s No Such Thing As An Ugly Bunny! Rabbit Spay and Neuter Pearls December 15, 2022
View more posts

Subscribe to Blog

Members’ Facebook Group

Canadian Animal Shelter & Community Medicine Association

No need to give kittens corn syrup post-op?

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Canadian Animal Shelter & Community Medicine AssociationMarch 16, 2018

It’s common practice to apply corn syrup to the oral mucosa of kittens after pediatric surgery. The ASV spay/neuter guidelines state that this practice “may” be beneficial. but up until now we haven’t really known if it is or isn’t. Logically, kittens would seem to be at risk of hypoglycemia after a period of fasting, and corn syrup could protect them from this potentially life-threatening complication. So far so good.

However, a recent study provided no support for the practice. The study included 75 kittens aged 8-16 weeks, that were spayed or neutered at a shelter. The kittens were fasted overnight before the surgery. They were randomized to a corn syrup group (corn syrup applied to the oral mucosa post-operatively) and control group (no corn syrup). Blood glucose was measured before sedation, immediately after surgery and 20 minutes post-op. The method of application of corn syrup (Q-tip), anesthetic (DKT) and glucose measurement (Alphatrak glucometer) closely paralleled common shelter methods.

Hypoglycemia was not found pre-or post-operatively in the kittens – in fact, just over half of the kittens were hyperglycemic 20 minutes post-op, possibly because of dexdomitor, stress and surgical trauma. Importantly, no individual kitten was hypoglycemic during the study, so the lack of hypoglycemia wasn’t just an average. There was no statistical difference between the corn syrup and control group for post-operative blood glucose levels. In the discussion, the authors comment that post-operative hyperglycemia is detrimental in human patients, so successfully increasing blood glucose in post-operative kittens could potentially have negative effects.

Here’s what’s interesting about this study:

  • It challenges an accepted wisdom
  • Hypoglycemia wasn’t found in 75 kittens that were fasted overnight, even though this was a longer fasting period than the recommended 2-4 hour fast
  • Corn syrup didn’t change the blood glucose of the treated kittens

So what do we do with this information? Should we stop giving corn syrup because it appears to be unnecessary and ineffective and could (maybe) be detrimental? Or do we continue because this is only one study, we hope the corn syrup could help an unrecognized hypoglycemic kitten that might otherwise be missed, and it’s current standard practice?

  1. Cornell HN et al. Effect of transmucosal corn syrup application on postoperative blood glucose concentrations in kittens. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery 19(4): 370-374, first published online at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1098612X17705537

 

GoToOlder PostNewer PostAll Posts
  • Home
  • Contact Us
  • Membership
  • Directory
  • Events
Association websites powered by MembershipWorks