Pharmacologic management of postoperative nausea and vomiting.

Katherine E Fero, Leena Jalota, Cyrill Hornuss, Christian C Apfel

University of California, UCSF Medical Center , Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, Mount Zion Campus, 1600 Divisadero, C-447, San Francisco, CA 94115, USA.

Expert opinion on pharmacotherapy 2011 Oct

filter terms:

As advances in the safety and efficacy of surgery and anesthesia have been made, other complications such as postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) have become more apparent. PONV occurs after 30% of all surgeries, and incidences as high as 80% have been reported among patients at high risk. This review provides a brief overview of the etiology and mechanisms of emesis and of known risk factors for PONV. It also covers pharmacologic therapies, appropriate management strategies, prophylactic strategies, multimodal therapy and rescue treatment. The main triggers for PONV are general anesthesia with inhalational anesthetics and opioids. When given to susceptible patients, e.g., females, the risk may be as high as 80%. In such patients, opioid-free regional anesthesia would be the most logical approach. However, if general anesthesia is needed, we prefer total intravenous anesthesia as it eliminates the use of inhalational anesthetics and reduces the risk for PONV. Importantly, efficacy of antiemetic interventions is independent as long as interventions have different mechanisms. Thus, for practical purposes, we prefer to titrate the use of antiemetics according to the validated Apfel simplified risk score. If a patient has 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the four risk factors, we apply a similar number of antiemetic strategies.

Citation

Katherine E Fero, Leena Jalota, Cyrill Hornuss, Christian C Apfel. Pharmacologic management of postoperative nausea and vomiting. Expert opinion on pharmacotherapy. 2011 Oct;12(15):2283-96