The Journal of international medical research
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This study identified predictive factors for post-operative nausea and vomiting (PONV) in patients using patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) and developed five predictive model pathways to calculate the probability of PONV using decision tree analysis. The sample consisted of 1181 patients using PCA. ⋯ Nine factors were highly predictive of PONV in our five model pathways: gender, obesity, anxiety, history of previous PONV, history of motion sickness, inhalation of nitrous oxide during operation, use of inhalational agents, starting oral fluid/food intake after operation, and post-operative pain. With these five predictive model pathways, we can predict the probability of PONV in an individual patient according to their individual characteristics.