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Vomiting and nausea

from Medical topics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2014

By
David J. De Lancy Horne  and
Elizabeth A. Coombes
Edited by
Susan Ayers ,
Andrew Baum ,
Chris McManus ,
Stanton Newman ,
Kenneth Wallston ,
John Weinman  and
Robert West
David J. De Lancy Horne
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham and Cancer Centre
Elizabeth A. Coombes
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham and Cancer Centre
Susan Ayers
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Andrew Baum
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Chris McManus
Affiliation:
St Mary's Hospital Medical School
Stanton Newman
Affiliation:
University College and Middlesex School of Medicine
Kenneth Wallston
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
John Weinman
Affiliation:
United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's
Robert West
Affiliation:
St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London
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Summary

Phenomenology of vomiting and nausea

Feelings of nausea (N) and actual vomiting (V) are universal experiences of human beings and probably also of many animals. Most of the time both N and V are acute experiences that pass quickly and are of little medical or health significance. However, severe and/or prolonged N and/or V can be very distressing and even life threatening; for example in children when V is associated with diarrhoea and dehydration, or people who die through choking on their vomit.

As Stern (2002) has recently highlighted, N, like pain, fatigue and itchiness, is a private, subjective experience but one which is highly dependent upon the interplay of profound physiological and psychological factors. Both V and N share much in common as far as causal factors are concerned but V, unlike N, is an observable and objectively verifiable event. This has implications for medical assessment and treatment so that N may be under-recognized and under-treated compared with V. This is particularly pertinent in chemotherapy for cancer (e.g. Sun et al., 2002) (see ‘Chemotherapy’).

N and V are associated with many aspects of illness and healthcare and frequently are of clinical significance (e.g. bulimia with induced vomiting; viral infections; side effects of treatments, such as chemotherapy (Osaba et al., 1997) and in pregnancy (Chou et al., 2003), where clear relationships have been found between depression and N and V.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 929 - 932
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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