If someone goes in for emergency surgery requiring general anesthesia, how do you prevent aspiration assuming they ate beforehand since it was unplanned?
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The anesthesiologist have to pay a lot more attention to the patient to notice when they are about to vomit and then help them out and clear the vomit so the airways stay clear. You may even need to intubate a patient in order to keep the airways clear during surgery. So it is possible to do surgery on patients that have eaten beforehand but it does add more work on the anesthesiologists and adds complications. This all reduces the chance of a successful surgery, adds time to the recovery period and may cause long term damage to the airways and lungs.
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