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Updated: Jul 9, 2025
Author Spotlight: Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Gastric Content Assessment and Risk Stratification in Perioperative Care
Published on: September 22, 2023
Rapid Evaluation of Gastric Content With Ultrasound: An Educational Tool
Huynh Nguyen1, Matthew R Paluska2, Ricardo Falcon3
1Department of Medicine, The Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.
Abstract:
Pulmonary aspiration is a severe complication in patients receiving anesthesia for surgical procedures. The risk and severity of aspiration are significantly higher in the presence of substantial gastric contents. Bedside ultrasound imaging of the gastric antrum is emerging as a rapid and valuable method to evaluate gastric contents before surgery. Rapid gastric ultrasound using a three-category grading system promotes timely decision-making to help in emergent or urgent surgeries by identifying patients with potentially high gastric volumes or solid food contents. In emergent cases with limited time, a single ultrasound view of the gastric antrum is still likely to yield helpful information. In this report, we argue that bedside ultrasound offers a more reliable assessment of gastric contents than assumptions based on time-based fasting guidelines.
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