(no subject)
The "carat"ed part is written by someone whose name I forget.
The reply is written by a DVM, who knows a bit about surgery and anesthesia.
> Even those that, like mine, were performed under
> general anesthesia (apparently part of having
> Asperger's syndrome is that drugs have unpredictable
> effects on one; the epidural they gave me only worked
> on my left side. Ouch!) are rather unlikely to result
> in aspiration of vomit. They give you drugs that
> freeze all of your muscles and make it impossible for
> you to even breathe without the aid of a machine,
> after all, and stick a tube down your throat. Still,
> IT ALWAYS PAYS TO BE PREPARED, right? Of course,
> right!
Oh no, its even better than this. If you have regional anesthesia and
vomit, you should be fine, as your various safety mechanisms to
prevent aspiration are intact. And while they don't typically
paralyze people under general anymore, they do insert a trach tube
into your trachea which makes it IMPOSSIBLE for you to aspirate vomit.
The only way aspiration is going to occur is if you do not have a
trach tube in and you are somehow incapacitated enough that your
epiglottis doesn't do its job.
But it gets even better....if you KNEW you were going to aspirate, it would be BETTER
to aspirate stomach contents with food or drink in it (not to mention that its been
shown that clear fluids, the one thing some women are allowed, typically
clear the stomach within 20 minutes anyway so giving them isn't all
that different from restricting them in the end) than to aspirate the
very high acid contents of an fasted stomach.
What's worse than this factoid?
The anesthesiologists KNOW this. I've asked a few and they
all KNOW this to be true. Its been researched, its been verified,
papers have been peer-reviewed and published showing that outcomes of
all sorts are better if women are not fasted in labor, and that
routine fasting prior to anesthesia in general (taking into account
what kind of surgery is going to be done, obviously -- you'd fast
before GI surgery) is not a good idea -- why do we still fast women in
labor? Because that's the way we've always done it. That is the ONLY
reason. Same reason we do all sorts of other stuff, of course. I
mean shoot, they "made" me fast for 12 hours before I had a spinal to
do knee surgery! (I didn't but I lied). The anesthesiologist agreed
with me that it was incredibly stupid, unnecessary and unsupported by
the research but that "it was the way it was done". Geez.
The reply is written by a DVM, who knows a bit about surgery and anesthesia.
> Even those that, like mine, were performed under
> general anesthesia (apparently part of having
> Asperger's syndrome is that drugs have unpredictable
> effects on one; the epidural they gave me only worked
> on my left side. Ouch!) are rather unlikely to result
> in aspiration of vomit. They give you drugs that
> freeze all of your muscles and make it impossible for
> you to even breathe without the aid of a machine,
> after all, and stick a tube down your throat. Still,
> IT ALWAYS PAYS TO BE PREPARED, right? Of course,
> right!
Oh no, its even better than this. If you have regional anesthesia and
vomit, you should be fine, as your various safety mechanisms to
prevent aspiration are intact. And while they don't typically
paralyze people under general anymore, they do insert a trach tube
into your trachea which makes it IMPOSSIBLE for you to aspirate vomit.
The only way aspiration is going to occur is if you do not have a
trach tube in and you are somehow incapacitated enough that your
epiglottis doesn't do its job.
But it gets even better....if you KNEW you were going to aspirate, it would be BETTER
to aspirate stomach contents with food or drink in it (not to mention that its been
shown that clear fluids, the one thing some women are allowed, typically
clear the stomach within 20 minutes anyway so giving them isn't all
that different from restricting them in the end) than to aspirate the
very high acid contents of an fasted stomach.
What's worse than this factoid?
The anesthesiologists KNOW this. I've asked a few and they
all KNOW this to be true. Its been researched, its been verified,
papers have been peer-reviewed and published showing that outcomes of
all sorts are better if women are not fasted in labor, and that
routine fasting prior to anesthesia in general (taking into account
what kind of surgery is going to be done, obviously -- you'd fast
before GI surgery) is not a good idea -- why do we still fast women in
labor? Because that's the way we've always done it. That is the ONLY
reason. Same reason we do all sorts of other stuff, of course. I
mean shoot, they "made" me fast for 12 hours before I had a spinal to
do knee surgery! (I didn't but I lied). The anesthesiologist agreed
with me that it was incredibly stupid, unnecessary and unsupported by
the research but that "it was the way it was done". Geez.