Management of the patient at high risk for postoperative nausea and vomiting

Postoperative nausea and vomiting continue to be problematic areas in anesthesia as evidenced by frequent reports of therapies in the literature. No single therapy has been proven curative for all cases, in part because of the several emetic centers, all of which may be blocked by different classes of drugs and the diverse risk factors which act alone or in combination to cause vomiting. Identification of the patient most at risk allows for cost effective prophylactic management. An appropriate anesthetic technique can be planned that, relying on evidence based medicine, will decrease if not prevent the incidence of this most troubling complication.