Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting Prophylaxis

The prophylaxis and treatment of postoperative pain to enhance patient comfort has been a primary goal of anesthesiologists for the last decades; however, avoiding postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is, from a patient's perspective, a highly relevant and equally important goal of anesthesia. Recent consensus-based guidelines suggest the assessment of risk factors including female gender, postoperative opioid administration, non-smoking status, a history of PONV or motion sickness, young patient age, longer duration of anesthesia, volatile anesthetics and the type of surgery and reducing the patient's baseline risk (e.g. through the use of regional anesthesia and administration of non-opioid analgesics as part of a multimodal approach). In general, a liberal PONV prophylaxis is encouraged for adult patients and children, which should also be administered when no risk assessment is made. The basis for every adult patient should be a standard prophylaxis with two antiemetics, such as dexamethasone in combination with a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist. In patients at high risk, this should be supplemented by a third and potentially a fourth antiemetic prophylaxis with a different mechanism of action. A recently published comprehensive Cochrane meta-analysis comparing available antiemetic prophylaxes reported the highest effectiveness to prevent PONV for the NK1 receptor antagonist aprepitant (relative risk, RR 0.26), followed by ramosetron (RR 0.44), granisetron (RR 0.45), dexamethasone (RR 0.51) and ondansetron (RR 0.55), thereby revising the dogma that every antiemetic is equally effective. Adverse events of antiemetics were generally rare and reported in less than half of the included studies, yielding a low quality of evidence for these end points. In general, combinations of different antiemetics were more effective than single prophylaxes. In children above 3 years of age, the same principles should be applied as in adults. For these patients, there is a high degree of evidence for the combination of dexamethasone and 5‑HT3 receptor antagonists. When PONV occurs, the consensus guidelines suggest that antiemetics from a class different than given as prophylaxis should be administered. To decrease the incidence of PONV and increase the quality of care, the importance of the implementation of institutional-level guidelines and protocols as well as assessment of PONV prophylaxis and PONV incidence is highly recommended. Auch wenn für Anästhesiologen über Jahrzehnte die Prophylaxe und Therapie postoperativer Schmerzen im Rahmen des postoperativen Patientenkomforts an vorderster Stelle standen, ist das Auftreten von postoperativer Übelkeit und postoperativem Erbrechen (PONV) aus Patientensicht ein höchst relevantes Ereignis mit einem sehr ähnlichen Stellenwert. Entsprechend aktueller konsensusbasierter Empfehlungen soll bei allen Patienten das Ausgangsrisiko für PONV möglichst niedrig gehalten (z. B. durch den gezielten Einsatz von Regionalanästhesieverfahren) und ein erhöhtes Risiko anhand gängiger Risikoklassifizierungen identifiziert werden. Generell wird zu einer liberalen Verabreichung einer Prophylaxe geraten, im Zweifel auch unabhängig von Risikoabschätzungen. Eine Prophylaxe mit 2 Antiemetika, wie z. B. die Gabe von Dexamethason in Kombination mit einem 5‑HT3-Rezeptor-Antagonisten, kann in vielen Szenarien die Basis für alle Patienten darstellen und soll bei hohem Risiko um Dritt- und Viertprophylaxen aus weiteren Substanzklassen ergänzt werden. Eine kürzlich publizierte, umfassende Cochrane-Übersichtsarbeit zum Vergleich der Wirksamkeit verfügbarer Antiemetika konnte für die Wirkstoffklasse der NK1-Rezeptor-Antagonisten die höchste Effektivität im Hinblick auf die Vermeidung postoperativen Erbrechens feststellen. Generell waren Kombinationen unterschiedlicher Antiemetika effektiver als Einfachprophylaxen. Bei Kindern ab dem 3. Lebensjahr gelten die gleichen Grundsätze zur PONV-Prophylaxe wie bei Erwachsenen. Für diese Patientengruppe liegt ein hoher Grad an Evidenz für die Kombination von Dexamethason und 5‑HT3-Antagonisten vor. Zur Therapie von PONV sollten gemäß Leitlinienempfehlung Pharmaka aus Substanzklassen eingesetzt werden, die noch nicht im Rahmen der Prophylaxe gegeben wurden.

To summarize the evidence on perioperative nausea and vomiting management in adult patients worldwide. This is a summary of the best evidence on postoperative nausea and vomiting in adults. Databases such as British Medical Journal Best Practice, Cochrane Library, Joanna Briggs Institute, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, National Guideline Clearing House, Guidelines International Network, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Embase, Yimaitong Clinical Guidelines, China Anesthesia Official website, SinoMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang, and VIP were searched to collect the relevant guidelines for clinical decision-making, best practices, systematic review, evidence summary, and expert consensus about perioperative nausea and vomiting management. The retrieval time was from the establishment of the database to January 2022. Two authors independently evaluated the quality of the included literature and extracted and summarized the evidence that met the quality criteria. A total of 22 studies, including 1 best practice, 2 clinical decision-making articles, 7 evidence summaries, 1 clinical guideline, 9 systematic reviews, and 2 expert consensuses, were included. The summary of 37 pieces of evidence from 7 aspects: risk factors, assessment methods, multimodal prevention strategy, health education, nondrug intervention, drug prevention, postoperative analgesia management strategy, and organization management. The health care team should select the best evidence according to the characteristics of the department and clinical practice, scientifically manage perioperative nausea and vomiting of patients, reduce the incidence and severity of nausea and vomiting, and promote the accelerated rehabilitation of patients.

Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV), postoperative vomiting (POV), post-discharge nausea and vomiting (PDNV), and opioid-induced nausea and vomiting (OINV) continue to be causes of pediatric morbidity, delay in discharge, and unplanned hospital admission. Research on the pathophysiology, risk assessment, and therapy for PDNV, OINV and pain therapy options in children has received increased attention. Multimodal pain management with the use of perioperative regional and opioid-sparing analgesia has helped decrease nausea and vomiting. Two common emetogenic surgical procedures in children are adenotonsillectomy and strabismus repair. Although PONV risk factors differ between adults and children, the approach to decrease baseline risk is similar. As PONV and POV are frequent in children, antiemetic prophylaxis should be considered for those at risk. A multimodal approach for antiemetic and pain therapy involves preoperative risk evaluation and stratification, antiemetic prophylaxis, and pain management with opioid-sparing medications and regional anesthesia. Useful antiemetics include dexamethasone and serotonin 5-hydroxytryptamine-3 (5-HT3) receptor antagonists such as ondansetron. Multimodal combination prophylactic therapy using two or three antiemetics from different drug classes and propofol total intravenous anesthesia should be considered for children at high PONV risk. "Enhanced recovery after surgery" protocols include a multimodal approach with preoperative preparation, adequate intravenous fluid hydration, opioid-sparing analgesia, and prophylactic antiemetics. PONV guidelines and management algorithms help provide effective postoperative care for pediatric patients.

Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is a common complication in paediatric anaesthesia and is a source of significant morbidity. Various independent risk factors have been implicated in the development of paediatric PONV, including higher pain scores postoperatively, the use of opioids for pain management and the use of volatile anaesthetics for the maintenance of anaesthesia. This review of the current literature regarding the prevention and treatment of paediatric PONV is based on a search of the PubMed database, which identified published clinical trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. While the occurrence of PONV in many cases is difficult to avoid entirely, the risk can be mitigated by the use of multimodal nonopioid analgesic regimens, total intravenous drugs in favour of volatile anaesthetics and an appropriate regimen of prophylactic pharmacotherapy. Frequently administered drug classes for the prevention of PONV include corticosteroids, 5HT3 antagonists and anticholinergics. The clinical use of the findings in the literature may help to reduce the occurrence of PONV in children. In this review, we provide comprehensive and updated information on the risk factors contributing the occurrence of PONV in children, outline the current opinion on the drugs that are commonly used for management and provide an overview of the guidelines that are used to help establish the prophylaxis and treatment of paediatric PONV.