Drinking before sedation

摘要

Traditionally, patients are starved of food and fluid for several hours before being given a general anaesthetic. However, in the early days of anaesthesia a drink was often recommended before the procedure, and a fluid fast became commonplace only after the publication of Mendelson's landmark study in 1946. In it he described the risk of gastric acid aspiration during obstetric anaesthesia with the consequent development of pneumonitis. He also showed that human gastric acid injected into the airway of rabbits caused radiographic changes similar to those described after acid aspiration in pregnant women.