How do You Take Your Coffee Before Anesthesia: A Randomized Controlled Crossover Study Comparing Gastric Emptying With Black Coffee vs Coffee With Cream

Undergoing anesthesia requires patients to fast pre-operatively to allow the stomach to empty and prevent aspiration pneumonia but patients are allowed to drink "clear" liquids up to 2 hours before surgery. Clear liquids are defined as water, carbonated sodas, black coffee or tea without milk or sugar, and juices without pulp. Many Americans prefer to take their coffee with half and half or coffee creamer rather than black. This study will determine whether the addition of a small amount of cream to coffee makes any difference to the volume in the stomach after 2 hours.

This study will use healthy volunteers as study participants. Each participant will participate in the study 3 times with at least 2 days in between. We will use a bedside ultrasound machine to measure their stomach content volume at baseline and then they will consume one of 3 different prepare drinks - black coffee, coffee with half and half, or coffee with non-dairy coffee creamer. After 2 hours, we will scan their stomach again and measure stomach content volume and compare it to the first measurement. The participants will repeat this two more times on different days so that they would have had a chance to consume all three prepared coffee drinks in a random order.