Stomach Pump

For years people have heard of having a stomach pump done. Usually this has been news worthy stories from when some celebrity has had an overdose on drugs and has had them evacuated from his or her body with this procedure.

While the main use is to remove poisons and toxins from the body and that has been the primary use for over 200 years of recorded history. Today you will find that it is also being used to remove the contents of the stomach before an operation.

Typically in a stomach pump situation a tube is run into the stomach via the nose or the mouth. Then small amounts of liquid are introduced into the stomach and removed. This procedure is repeated until the fluid coming back on the suction contains no stomach acid components.

Special care is also taken during the start of this procedure, especially if the tube is in the nose, to be sure that the tube has actually been inserted into the stomach and not into the lungs.

Also while the stomach pump is being done, the staff stands by with suction in the event that the unconscious patient should begin to vomit. There are many factors to take into consideration before and during this procedure and therefore it is not done unless absolutely needed.

Today, in fact, this method of doing a stomach pump is not routinely used unless there is possibly a potentially life threatening amount of poison or drugs that have been ingested by the patient and usually this will only be an option if the procedure can be administered within and hour of the ingestion of the substance because after that time a potentially lethal dose of the substance could easily have been absorbed via the stomach lining, which would render the procedure ineffective and useless.

The stomach pump method of evacuating the contents of the stomach are also contradicted in the case where wither the airway is severely compromised or unprotected or if there is a possibility of a severe hemorrhage in the stomach such as might be cause by the ingestion of an extremely caustic or corrosive substance.

The more accepted alternative these days to using a stomach pump solution is to pump or introduce a mixture of activated carbon into the stomach. This is a form of carbon that has a large surface area to which various forms of poisons can adhere which then stops them from being absorbed into the stomach wall and passed on to the blood stream.

While serious side effects from a stomach pump operation are rare there is still the risk of damage to the stomach and the area leading into it from the physical insertion of the tube to do the operation.

I wrote a guide you may be interested in reading: gastric band and mini gastric bypass

Stomach Pump

rod stewart stomach pump

Stomach Pump

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