Prevalence study for postoperative nausea vomiting: A training hospital example

Simplified risk models, such as the Apfel score, have been developed to calculate the risk of postoperative nausea-vomiting (PONV) for adult patients. In the absence of any risk factors, PONV risk is assumed to be 10%. While the presence of one of the four risk factors determined as female gender, non-smoking, PONV/car sickness history, and postoperative opioid use is associated with 20% risk for PONV, the risk increases by 20% with the addition of each risk factor, and reaches to 80% if four factors are present.

: Our aim in this study is to investigate the prevalence of PONV, and whether the scoring systems used for nausea-vomiting in the literature are still valid.

Five groups of patients were included in the study with an Apfel score of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. Each case was taken to the recovery room at the end of the operation. They were observed whether had nausea-vomiting was recorded according to the Abramowitz emesis score.

While the PONV risk for women is 24.637 times higher than men, the PONV risk of those who had gynecological surgery is 6.27 times higher than that of the other type of surgery. Those who had urological surgery are 0.345 times less than the other type of surgery. Those who had lower abdominal surgery had a risk of PONV of 4.56 times higher than the others. As the duration of the case increases, the risk of PONV increases 1.01 times (P values P < 0.001, P < 0.001, P < 0.001, P = 0.048, P < 0.001, respectively).

As a result, our PONV prevalence is considerably lower than the frequency rates mentioned in the literature. PONV scoring systems need long-term studies with larger populations to be updated.