Help-Neutropenic diet :Evidenced Based

[LaurynRN]

Hi everyone. I am an oncology nurse and am writing a research paper on the neutropenic diet/low-bacterial diet. I am currently attempting to collect previous literature from peer reviewed journals and I am coming up short. Every time I find an article I can use it turns out to be a dead end. I have been working on this for weeks and have come up with very little literature regarding the subject on whether or not these protcective diets are actually preventing infection. If anyone has any ideas it would be appreciated. I have already combed the Oncology Nursing Forum webpage and all the journals listed there. I have used search engines through school (but they are very limited in the amount of journals they have).

Any input would be appreciated!

[evergreener]

The information I have found from 2000 and 2003 says that the studies show no conclusive evidence that these diets help prevent mortality in neutropenic pts. I cannot find recent research either.

I will keep hunting...please let me know if you find anything either. I am writing a paper on this for nursing school.

[LaurynRN]

You are right, there is no evidence..so if for school you need to find this then you might want to consider writing about something different. What my instructor did tell me to do was to find whatever I could and then define why additional research should be done. My paper will reflect what the current practices are, why, and why nursing intervention (ie. teaching about diet) will aid in a decreased evidence of infection in neutropenic patients. I will base this on other studies on nurse delivered education on diet and then state that it will apply to my population as well. Check your school library for Oncology Nursing Forum (journal) I have found some articles in there , the March issue has a good one too!