Search strategy and data collection
All studies reporting on pharmacological intervention for POI treatment
and prevention were considered eligible for analysis. The literature was
systematically reviewed by searching in the PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane
Libraries with no restrictions concerning the publication period. The
search period ended on 1st July 2022. The medical
subject headings (MESH) used are summarised in Supplemental Table 1. The
full search strategies are listed in Supplement Table 1. They are
adapted from previous systematic reviews including ones from our team’s
work5 and used with bibliographic databases in
combination with database-specific filters for controlled trials where
available. Trials investigating pharmacological treatments for
post-operative ileus after abdominal surgery were searched by adding
boundaries for randomised controlled trials (with the exploded terms
”random” ”trial” or ”RCT”).