Fasting of less than eight hours in urgent and emergency surgeries versus complication.

OBJECTIVE to verify the occurrence of intraoperative and postoperative complications in patients undergoing urgent and emergency surgical procedures between January and December 2012, with fasting time of less than 8 hours. METHOD a quantitative study was conducted, of the retrospective cohort type, through the analysis of medical records. RESULTS we included 181 records of patients undergoing surgical procedures with average duration of 59.4 minutes. Fractures correction surgeries stood out, totalling 32% of cases. We observed complications in 36 patients (19.9%), vomiting being the most prevalent (47.2%); followed by nausea (16.7%); need for blood transfusion (13.9%); surgical site infection (11.1%); and death (11.1%). The average fasting time was 133.5 minutes. The fasting time showed no statistically significant correlation with the complications investigated. CONCLUSION intraoperative and postoperative complications were associated with the clinical conditions of the patients and not with the fasting time.