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.
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Long story short surgery is, at it’s core, a risk benefit decision. In an emergency the risk of aspiration relative to waiting and not performing the surgery favors surgery. In ANY other situation the risk of aspiration relative to waiting and not performing the surgery favors aspiration… so you wait.
In an emergency they do something called rapid sequence intubation. They get everything ready, knock you out, paralyze you, and intubate in rapid succession to minimize the opportunity for stomach contents to come up the esophagus. There is a risk for becoming hypotensive and cardiac incident when doing that, so it’s not favored.
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