U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Dioctyl Sulfosuccinate or Docusate (Calcium or Sodium) for the Prevention or Management of Constipation: A Review of the Clinical Effectiveness [Internet]. Ottawa (ON): Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health; 2014 Jun 26.

Cover of Dioctyl Sulfosuccinate or Docusate (Calcium or Sodium) for the Prevention or Management of Constipation: A Review of the Clinical Effectiveness

Dioctyl Sulfosuccinate or Docusate (Calcium or Sodium) for the Prevention or Management of Constipation: A Review of the Clinical Effectiveness [Internet].

Show details

KEY FINDINGS

There remains a paucity of good quality evidence to support the use of docusate for the prevention or management of constipation in hospitalized patients or long-term care residents. Docusate appears to be no more effective than placebo for increasing stool frequency or softening stool consistency. Furthermore, it does not appear to lessen symptoms associated with constipation (i.e. abdominal cramps) or affect the perceptions associated with completeness of or difficulties with stool evacuation. More robust, high quality primary studies are required to definitively ascertain the clinical effectiveness of docusate for the prevention and management of constipation, no matter what its cause.

Copyright © 2014 Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health.

Copyright: This report contains CADTH copyright material and may contain material in which a third party owns copyright. This report may be used for the purposes of research or private study only. It may not be copied, posted on a web site, redistributed by email or stored on an electronic system without the prior written permission of CADTH or applicable copyright owner.

Links: This report may contain links to other information available on the websites of third parties on the Internet. CADTH does not have control over the content of such sites. Use of third party sites is governed by the owners’ own terms and conditions.

Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND), a copy of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Bookshelf ID: NBK259244

Views

  • PubReader
  • Print View
  • Cite this Page
  • PDF version of this title (513K)

Other titles in this collection

Recent Activity

Your browsing activity is empty.

Activity recording is turned off.

Turn recording back on

See more...