Post-operative nausea and vomiting: Update on predicting the probability and ways to minimize its occurrence, with focus on ambulatory surgery

• Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is still not uncommon after surgery and anaesthesia.
• It is still not possible to guarantee that an individual patient will not experience PONV.
• There are several factors contributing to the occurrence of PONV.
• There is a need for proper risk assessment.
• There is a need for further studies how to identify patients at risk.

Postoperative nausea and vomiting “the little big problem” after surgery/anaesthesia is still a common side-effect compromising quality of care, delaying discharge and resumption of activities of daily living. A huge number of studies have been conducted in order to identify risk factors, preventive and therapeutic strategies. The Apfel risk score and a risk based multi-modal PONV prophylaxis is advocated by evidence based guidelines as standards of care but is not always followed. Tailored anaesthesia and pain management avoiding too liberal dosing of anaesthetics and opioid analgesics is also essential in order to reduce risk. Thus multi-modal opioid sparing analgesia and a risk based PONV prophylaxis should be provided in order to minimise the occurrence. There is however still no way to guarantee an individual patient that he or she should not experience any PONV. Further studies are needed trying to identify risk factors and ways to tailor the individual patient prevention/therapy are warranted.The present paper provides a review around prediction, factors influencing the occurrence and the management of PONV with a focus on the ambulatory surgical patient.