What does 'pumping' your stomach mean? and do physicians really do that?

Question

What does 'pumping' your stomach mean? and do physicians really do that?

Answer 1

It means that you get all of the bad things out of your stomach like if you over dosed on drugs they would get them out by pumping your stomach.

Yea they really do that because it is not very good for you to have bad things in your stomach so yea they really do it.

Answer 2

Nurses do it.  

It means inserting a nasogastric (NG) tube into your nose, this then goes into your stomach.  Depending on what the nurses and physician deems the best treatment, activated charcoal or another substance will be poured down the tube, and then sucked back out with suction.  The charcoal, or whatever substance is used, will absorb the chemicals in your stomach, and reverse the effects of whatever you have taken.  Also, the unabsorbed things will be sucked back out of your stomach by the suction device that is attached to the end of the tube.  

This procedure is very uncomfortable, and patients usually don't take it very well.  Especially those who wanted to kill themselves.

Answer 3

They induce vomiting if possible,

But yeah otherwise they use suction to remove the contents of your stomach.

Answer 4

It's called gastric lavage. Those who know what they're doing don't do it very often, and when they do they use a large orogastric tube (Ewald). More common and generally inappropriate in the toxicologic area is the nasogastric tube. The lavage (washing out) is often accompanied by activated charcoal, so you'll normally see the physicians staying as far away as they can get, so they don't get either gastric contents or charcoal on their clothes.

There are only a very few poisons in which it's indicated, so it's no longer supposed to be part of the routine in people who've overdosed, for instance, but the word has been slow to get out, so you'll still see it done on occasion.