If you were in a car crash and had been eating all day, how is that different from a routine surgery where you weren’t allowed to eat for a certain amount of time before surgery?
Edit: based on some answers, perhaps I should clarify obviously I understand they have to perform surgery in an emergency. My question is more what do they do in an emergency when you haven’t fasted.
Thanks to those with real answers, I never knew about the special tube that could be used. That’s pretty cool.
I’m having surgery tomorrow and can’t eat so was just wondering how they handle food in the stomach during an emergency surgery situation.
In: 2585
It’s all about risk management.
If you come to a broken bridge and you’re confident that you can leap the gap, you probably would.
If I told you there were piranha in the water below, you might not.
But, if you were being chased by a tiger, you might make the leap anyway, because the tiger is a more immediate threat.
I mean, you’d still die, tigers can leap like 35 feet.
So, they minimize the risk in planned surgery by making sure you don’t eat so you don’t aspirated food, get pneumonia and die. But, if you’re going to die anyway, they’ll try to save you and then hope you don’t aspirate food, and if you do, hope they can treat that.
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