Hemorrhagic Fever
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- Nov 7, 2018
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Can someone please explain to me why primary care doctors don't prescribe zofran to "stomach flu" patients more often? There's this culture in medicine where pain needs to be addressed immediately, but for some reason nausea should just "let it run it's course". I'm sorry, but severe nausea with projectile vomiting can be more unfcomfortable than many injuries where an opioid is prescribed. I've much rather have some dental work done with no pain meds prescribed after than deal with a severe norovirus. Zofran is proven very safe with no addiction potential.
So why do doctors still have this mentality of letting patients suffer and increasing risk of dehydration? If you visit your average pcp md and you have a stomach bug they just tell you to drink lots of fluids. Why do that when you have a proven drug that can at least get rid of the nausea. Once someone is dry heaving, vomiting servers no purpose. Norovirus is not going backwards up the duodenum. It's perfectly happy killing enterocytes. Also, many people are hospitalized due to dehyration, then they sometimes give zofran. You can avoid the hospitalization entirely by just giving them zofran so they can keep liquids down. Is this just old school cultural thing or is there an actual hard fact based reason for not giving anti nausea meds routinely when people are vomiting repeatedly?
So why do doctors still have this mentality of letting patients suffer and increasing risk of dehydration? If you visit your average pcp md and you have a stomach bug they just tell you to drink lots of fluids. Why do that when you have a proven drug that can at least get rid of the nausea. Once someone is dry heaving, vomiting servers no purpose. Norovirus is not going backwards up the duodenum. It's perfectly happy killing enterocytes. Also, many people are hospitalized due to dehyration, then they sometimes give zofran. You can avoid the hospitalization entirely by just giving them zofran so they can keep liquids down. Is this just old school cultural thing or is there an actual hard fact based reason for not giving anti nausea meds routinely when people are vomiting repeatedly?
