Food Related Video and the Incidence of Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting

Postoperative nausea/vomiting (PONV) is a common problem following surgery and anesthesia. There are risk factors that increase the incidence of PONV that are related to the patient, to the surgical procedure or to the anesthetic agents. At the subjective level PONV is described as worse and more feared than postoperative pain by many patients. At the objective level it increases the length of stay in the recovery room, it results in unplanned hospital admission and Emergency Room visits, and therefore increased cost of care. A lot of research work has been done to identify pharmacological agents to prevent and treat PONV. The higher the risk of a patient the higher number of these drugs are combined for prophylaxis. However, these drugs have significant side effects of their own. Much less attention has been paid to potential non-pharmacological PONV prevention options. The purpose of our study is to investigate the putative role of the natural stimulation of normal gastrointestinal function via the Pavlovian reflex. We seek to find a natural method with no side effects to improve PONV prophylaxis in patients with risk factors for that postoperative complication.