“Nausea after surgery”

Talk with your anesthesiologist. There are new medications on the market that can help with post-operative nausea. One can be prescribed as a patch before surgery that's put on just before the procedure behind the ear, 'Scopolamine.' This can also help. You may just be more sensitive to anesthesia.

Change your diet to organic, non-GMO, low gluten diet and lose weight if needed. Consult Functional Medicine. Drink more ginger/mint tea daily.

General Anaesthesia is improving the treatments for the patients who need it. You just have to discuss your previous experience with your anaesthetist, she/he will consult you before surgery and that will be easy for your to discuss your problems. Be sure to tell them all your previous experience you had under GA.

The anesthesiologist maybe able to give you some anti nausea medication before they take you to the operating room and induce you for general anasthesia, that sometimes helps. Basically, the doctor that maybe able to help you with this is most likely the anasthesiologist.

You may want to make sure you have a empty stomach and ask if they can give you something for nausea when they give you the anesthesia or ask your doctor about a different anesthesia.

Nausea after anesthesia is a problem for almost everyone. Traditionally, we have tried to pretreat with a meclizine patch. This works in most circumstances. This is sometimes not enough. The reason most patients experience nausea after any anesthesia is usually the use of opiates for pain control during the procedure. Opiates act directly on the nausea centers of the brain and many of the antiemetics we use, block receptors in that part of the brain. Recently, many medical centers have adopted the ERAS (Early Recovery After Anesthesia) protocols. The idea is to minimize the use of opiates during the procedure. If you have intractable nausea after any procedure, even with pretreatment, you should inquire if your provider uses the ERAS protocol.
There is also a new antiemetic on the market that has really helped many of my patients with this problem. Emend is an FDA approved medication that we actually start administering the night before a scheduled operation. You may consider inquiring your proceduralist about this drug. You might also need to make sure your insurance will pay for it as it is quite expensive.

This is a frustrating situation. However there is a medication called scopolamine that can be given the day before surgery to tremendously decrease your changes if nausea after surgery. It is given as a patch on your skin ( called transdermal ). You can also get the normal anti nausea medications on top of that during and after surgery too. This usually does the trick. Good luck with surgery

Anesthesia is constantly coming up with new ways to help the patient with PONV (post operative nausea and vomiting.) Pre-treatment with antihistamines, prophylactic dose of ondasetron, and now even a single dose of dexamethasone in the PACU. When the anesthesiologist talks to you pre-op, be sure to tell him.

You should definitely have a discussion with your surgeon and anesthesiologist about your post-operative nausea and vomiting (PONV). A scopolamine patch can be placed 1-3 days prior to surgery. Emend, an anti-emetic, can be prescribed and taken by mouthy on the night before surgery. Steroids can be given during surgery. Narcotics (also known as opiates or pain medications such as hydrocodone, morphine, and hydromorphone) can cause lots of nausea as well. There may be other pain medications that work in conjunction with narcotics to lower the overall dosing of such medications.

Your problem is not unusual. There are multiple sites in the brain called "trigger zones" that control nausea. Anesthesia specialists need to block all of these zones to prevent excess postop nausea, and this requires giving you 4-6 different medications before you go sleep. Discuss this problem with your anesthesia provider before your next surgery, and you should have a better result.


Joseph E. Ronaghan, MD, FACS, FICS
Associate Professor, Dept. of Surgery