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Palliative cancer care - nausea & vomiting - Management
What should I ask about the nausea and vomiting?
- Features:
- Nausea: onset, frequency, intensity, relieving and exacerbating factors, relationship to vomiting.
- Vomiting: onset, frequency, quantity, force, colour, timing, and pattern.
- Other symptoms:
- Dyspepsia, heartburn, fullness, early satiety, constipation, diarrhoea, flatus, cough, headache, confusion.
- Treatments:
- Simple measures — what has been tried, and its effectiveness.
- Current medication — recent changes and coinciding symptoms (especially opiates, anticholinergics, digoxin, antibiotics).
- Chemotherapy — timing of last treatment.
- Anti-emetics — current and past use, effectiveness.
- Radiation — area treated and number of treatments received.
- Medical history (e.g. ulcers, bowel surgery).
- Effect on nutrition (e.g. fluid and food intake in the past 24 hours).
- Effect on quality of life.
- For more information, see Features indicating a cause.
Basis for recommendation
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