Many outpatient practitioners administer some type of antiemetic to surgical patients regardless of the PONV risk, according to the results of an Outpatient Surgery reader poll of 32 readers. Forty-one percent said all surgical patients should receive PONV prophylaxis and 12 percent were unsure. Even though studies indicate that such a universal approach is not cost-effective, many practitioners seem to feel otherwise. "Delay of discharge and patient dissatisfaction are more costly than drug costs," wrote one director of nursing at a center where even elderly patients undergoing cataract extraction receive a prophylactic 5-HT3 receptor antagonist. Noted another medical director of a multispecialty center where nearly all patients receive at least one prophylactic antiemetic drug: "Aggressive use of PONV prophylaxis at our center has helped keep PONV consistently below 5 percent."