For most people, burping in public places is both annoying and embarrassing. But for some people, burping will also greatly affect their quality of life, including cancer patients and brain injury patients.
Family therapies to relieve temporary hiccups, such as holding your breath, circulating breathing in paper bags, drinking water at the far end of the cup, all have problems such as unclear explanation, inconsistent performance and poor effect. We need a simple and effective way to stop burping.
On June 18, a study published in the online edition of Journal of American Medical Association found us a way to relieve hiccups.
In this study, 249 participants received a new burping intervention called "forced inhalation and swallowing tool". The results show that 90.8% people have a positive attitude towards this measure, and think that this method is more effective than family remedies such as breathing into paper bags or being scared by friends.
FISST is a kind of hard drinking pipe with water inlet valve. It needs to look like a coarse milkshake straw, but there is only a small opening at the bottom, so users have to suck hard to drink water. In the process of sucking, the strong suction force the diaphragm to contract, prevent its spasm, force the epiglottis to close, and finally may play a role in preventing hiccups. FISST has been patented and the brand is "HiccAway".
In this cross-sectional study, volunteers obtained FISST through online activities in 2020 and received prospective follow-up for 4 months. This study follows the report on strengthening epidemiological observation research.
Globally, 674 participants who burped voluntarily accepted the use of the device, 290 participants provided written consent to participate in the study, and provided subjective evaluation of FISST through online questionnaires.
Among the 249 people who finally reached the standard, most participants reported burping at least once a month, and most burping lasted less than 2 hours. FISST effectively prevented hiccups in nearly 92% of cases, and got a good evaluation compared with family therapy in all demographic characteristics, hiccups frequency and hiccups duration. Among the participants who accepted the questionnaire, the average subjective validity score of FISST was 4.58; Among the 203 participants, 183 thought that FISST was better than family therapy. The average satisfaction is 4.57. Of the 249 participants, 226 thought FISST was more feasible than family therapy. No adverse reactions were reported.
Generally speaking, these results support the use of FISST as an option to stop temporary hiccups. As mentioned above, in the past, many family therapies included physical manipulations aimed at stimulating diaphragm contraction and/or epiglottis closure. These methods lack a clear and standardized description, which may be troublesome to implement, and there is little scientific research on their effectiveness. Although drugs and other therapies have different degrees of success, adverse reactions are a problem.
Studies have confirmed that FISST is an easy-to-use tool, which can relieve the transient hiccups. Compared with home remedies, this device has a better effect. It can take immediate effect, the effect can last for several hours, and it may be widely used in the future. Of course, researchers also need to evaluate the efficacy of FISST in randomized clinical trials.