Introduction There have been numerous recent clinical reports praising the effectiveness of d-pantothenyl alcohol in shortening the period of postoperative ileus. In all of the early studies the drug was administered to a group of patients as the calcium salt or in alcohol form and results were described without adequate controls.1-8 Recently, 2 studies have utilized the double-blind technique for clinical evaluation of the drug. Haycock et al.9found a significant drop in the incidence of distention and earlier appearance of peristalsis in a group of 100 patients undergoing laparotomy for various reasons. Frazer et al.10reported a series of 100 cases evaluated by the double-blind technique in which they found earlier resumption of audible peristalsis and passage of flatus in the treated group. No late ileus occurred in the 50 treated patients, but 6 cases of late ileus were observed in the control group. It was