The results suggest that there is a wide range in gastric emptying in critically ill patients. The results may be due to the case mix of the patients. The use of dopamine may adversely affect gastric emptying and requires further investigation in the ICU patient. Prediction of gastric emptying is difficult in these patients and further investigation is necessary in order to improve our understanding of this process.

Patients may not receive prescribed oxygen because the oxygen face mask becomes displaced. Using video, we have observed the position of the face mask in 20 postoperative patients and recorded the timing and the events associated with mask displacement. Correct placement of the mask was confirmed at the start of the 8-h study period from 22:00 on the first night after operation. The mask remained on continuously and positioned correctly in only one patient. In the other 19 patients, it was removed 64 times (range 1-10 times per patient). The mask was removed 45 times for nursing tasks such as mouth care and temperature measurement and these represented 70% of the total number of times that the mask was not in position. Other reasons for removal were vomiting, retching and removal by the patient. The mask remained off a median time of 6 min 55 s per episode (range 46 s to 7 h 46 min 57 s) and per patient a median of 1 h 6 min 48 s (range 1 min to 7 h 46 min 57 s). Mask removal resulted in an average decrease in oxygen saturation of 4%. Oxygen by mask at 4 litre min-1 maintained an average saturation > or = 95% in most, but not all, of the patients.

No abstract

We have investigated the effect of nurse and patient education on oxygen mask placement after surgery. In 15 patients, each studied for 8 h, masks remained positioned correctly in two and were removed a total of 37 times in the others. Median total removal time per patient (4 min 3 s) was less than in previous studies and maximum total time of mask removal was 1 h 33 min 57 s. Masks were removed for longer than 10 min on four occasions in two patients. None of these removals was for nursing care. This is an improvement compared with previous studies.