How do trauma surgeons deal with the fact that the patients they operate on probably haven’t fasted the night before given that trauma patients don’t know in advance they’ll be having surgery?

Question

I know that with elective surgeries, patients have to fast the night before to prevent vomiting when they go under anesthetic, but I was wondering how this concern is navigated in trauma or emergency surgeries in which patients definitely didn’t fast the night before? Do they just try to deal with the vomit or is there a special procedure to prevent vomiting from occurring?

In: 1727

Answer 1

I do it at work as a paramedic. You just do it. You prep as best you can. Have suction ready in case they vomit. Position the patient as best you can to have the anatomy lined up and have your tools ready to go so you can get the tube in quickly and also without messing around unnecessarily aggravating their gag reflex.
Once the tube is in you have a cuff that blocks the airway from any other foreign bodies. Sometimes they vomit. You clean it as best you can and we can even do deep sectioning with a flexible tube that goes down the ETT to pull put what we can from their airway.