PONV Incidence in Gynecologic Surgery

As reported by our institutional medical records, the incidence of nausea in patients who were administered dexamethasone and ondansetron while undergoing laparoscopic gynecologic surgery with sufentanil-based IV-PCA was 50%. The required number of patients for a 50% decrement in the incidence of PONV [15 (link),16 (link)] at 80% power, with a two-sided alpha error of 0.05, was 65 per group; thus, 144 patients were recruited, anticipating a dropout rate of 10%. The per-protocol approach was used to analyze the main results based on the data of the patients who completed this study. Statistical analyses were conducted with the SPSS Statistics software version 26.0 for Windows (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA). For quantitative variables, normality was assessed using the Shapiro–Wilk test. The independent t-test or Wilcoxon test was used for the normally or non-normally distributed variables, respectively. For dichotomous variables, the χ² test or Fisher’s exact test was used. Data are displayed as median (interquartile range [IQR]), or the number of patients (%). A p-value of less than 0.05 is considered to be statistically significant.