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

The anesthesiologists can perform a “rapid sequence induction” in cases like this where a patient is an aspiration risk but the survey needs to proceed. Essentially, they just induce the patient (put them to sleep) while someone holds cricoid pressure and then they intubate right away without mask ventilation. Once the endotracheal tube is inserted there should theoretically be no risk of aspiration.