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
The risk from food being present is the same in both cases, the only difference is that in an emergency that risk is *worth it*.
With emergency surgery, your options are “don’t operate and die” or “do operate and small chance the food will cause a complication”. **The food being there isn’t somehow “OK” now, it’s just** ***tolerable*** **because the no-surgery option is even worse**. You do the surgery because even *with* the increased risk from the food, the person has a better overall chance of living if you operate vs. if you don’t.
Whereas with routine surgery, you can remove this risk from the food right down to 0 by simply not eating before surgery, so why wouldn’t you?
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