The research was conducted as a randomized controlled clinical trial between January 2020 and January 2022. The sample of the research; Patients who applied to Hospital Radiotherapy Unit, received 50-60 Gy radiotherapy in the oral cavity, had a primary diagnosis of head and neck cancer, had no metastasis, had no complaints about mucositis, were older than 18 years old, spoke Turkish, and agreed to participate, in the study. With the closed-envelope randomization method, 48 patients were included in the sample, 12 patients for each of the saline, sodium bicarbonate, thyme honey, and control groups. The routine protocol of the clinic was applied to the control group. Patients in the intervention group (thyme honey, saline and sodium bicarbonate group) were treated 3 times a day for 6 weeks, in addition to the routine protocol of the clinic; they were asked to gargle with 20 ml of the solution in the group they were randomized to, 15 minutes before, 15 minutes and 6 hours after radiotherapy. Intraoral evaluations were made every week by the responsible physician of the radiotherapy unit, who did not know which group the patients were in (single blind). Study data; Obtained using the Sociodemographic and Disease Data Collection Form, the National Cancer Institute Common Toxicity Criteria v4.03, the Oral Evaluation Guide, and the Washington University Quality of Life Questionnaire. In the study, Chi-square analysis was used for the relationship between two categorical variables, One-way Anova for differences in measurements, Levene test for homogeneity of variance, and Bonferroni analysis to find out from which group or groups the difference originated. Support was received from the Health Sciences University Scientific Research Project Office for the study (2020/029)
This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of thyme honey, saline and sodium bicarbonate solution in the management of oral mucositis in patients with head and neck cancer receiving radiotherapy.