thetist every day, as is the case
for 43.7% of the 135 OR man-
agers we polled at last month's
OR Excellence conference in
Las Vegas, Nev., or the same
anesthetist every day, as is the
staffing model for 37.8% of
respondents at ORX. To help
you hold up your end of the bar-
gain, we sent an online survey to
a select panel of anesthetists
that asked them to rank 15
drugs and devices on a 1-to-5
scale, ranging from extremely important to unimportant. Here are the
6 products that scored highest, the 6 no OR should be without, based
on 72 responses.
1. Antiemetics
"Most patients would prefer to be in pain than nauseous after surgery,"
says Mike Donovan, CRNA, reflecting the panel consensus that
antiemetics are the most highly valued tool in the anesthesiology arma-
mentarium. "And it's always better to prevent PONV than to treat it."
Of course those spinning heads and inside-out stomachs aren't just
miserable for patients, they're expensively inconvenient for facilities,
too. And providers say they're employing a variety of weapons and
recipes designed to make anesthesia easier to stomach.
Mr. Donovan minimizes PONV by "almost always" administering
total intravenous anesthesia and blocking nausea receptors early with
4 mg of ondansetron — often considered the "gold standard" of
antiemetics. He typically adds 10 mg of dexamethasone at the end of
6 2 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7
• TOP PRIORITY Nothing is more important than preventing PONV,
our online panelists say.
