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www.doctorfriedberg.com |
November 2006
Re: “What’s Your PONV IQ?” (October OSM, p 40).
Forgive my paraphrasing of the Bard but nowhere has the issue of PONV been spoken to with more succinct words than those of my friend and colleague, Chris Pollock, a British anesthetist, who said, “If you want people to stop throwing up, stop giving them drugs that make them throw up.” When the issue of PONV comes up in my practice, I tell my patients with previous such experience that their sensitivity is like being a bucket of gasoline. If you don’t throw a match (emetogenic agents like opioids or inhalational vapors, for example), you won’t need to worry about what fire extinguisher (anti-emetics) to use.
Dr. Friedberg (drfriedberg@doctorfriedberg.com) is the author of the upcoming textbook Anesthesia in Cosmetic Surgery, Minimally Invasive Anesthesia for Minimally Invasive Surgery.