San Diego, CA– In a move that shocked surgeons and anesthesiologists alike, the American Society of Anesthesia announced today that their NPO guidelines are completely baseless.
“To be honest, I came up with the 8 hours NPO thing as a resident when I really wanted to make it to a dinner and ortho was trying to add on a case. If the patient had eaten 6.5 hours earlier it would have been the 7 hour rule” veteran anesthesiologist Dr. “Red” Howard admitted.
“I thought everyone knew I was making it up on the spot but the surgeons just bitched a bit and said ‘well if it isn’t safe’ then they walked away. Ever since we’ve been making up durations based on types of food, clarity of beverages, all kinds of baloney,” Dr. Red told Gomerblog.
“Did I ever feel guilty about all those cases cancelled through the years? Sure. A bit but then I think about how many anesthesiologists made it home for dinner and made it to sporting events and plain old never had to work past 5pm! We changed lives”
When asked if he would do it all over again, Dr. Red was pensive, “did we help a lot of people? You bet we did. Did we piss off a lot of surgeons and unnecessarily postpone surgeries until the next day? Of course.”
“Did we have any evidence to backup any of our NPO times? Not a damn bit.”