Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) delay postoperative recovery, prolongs hospital stays, and restricts patients′ return to society, thus making it a significant cause of expanded healthcare costs. It is also the most problematic postoperative complication in female patients undergoing surgery. Yet, Japan lacks guidelines for the management of PONV, and its management protocol is left to each institution and anesthesiologist. Hence a recent study created criteria for the intraoperative management of PONV.

It evaluated the usefulness of the criteria in female surgical patients by comparing the implementation rate of intraoperative management and PONV incidence before and after establishing the criteria. It set an Apfel simplified score (Apfel score) ≥2 as an indication for intraoperative management of PONV.

The study observed-

• An increase in the implementation rate of intraoperative management from 91.2 to 96.0% after the criteria introduction.
• Significant increase in the intraoperative management implementation rate from 81.1 to 94.7% in patients with an Apfel score of 2, while a significant decrease in PONV incidence from 44.6 to 34.1% after the criteria introduction.

This study shows the usefulness of the criteria for intraoperative management of PONV, which increased the implementation rate of intraoperative management and decreased PONV incidence.

J Pharm Health Care Sci. 2022 Apr 4;8(1):11. doi: 10.1186/s40780-022-00242-1. PMID: 35369889; PMCID: PMC8978367.