Your surgery > After surgery
After surgery
Recovery
After surgery, you will be brought into the heart surgery recovery room, where a team of doctors and nurses will monitor your lungs, heart, and kidneys with various devices until you wake up.
There will be a dressing on the operating wound and tubes to drain any blood coming off the heart sutures. You will also have a tube in your trachea, hooked up to a ventilator to help you breathe.
As you wake up, you will gradually be able to breathe on your own, first with the help of the ventilator and then monitored by the ventilator (which will sound if your lungs get lazy!). When you are completely conscious, recovery room staff will stop the ventilator and remove the tube from your trachea.
Precautions after surgery
Pain
You may have chest wall pain after surgery. Let the nurses know. Recovery room staff members have medication to relieve pain and make you more comfortable. A physiotherapist will do breathing exercises with you several times a day to bring your lungs back up to normal use and clear harmful secretions which could cause lung infections.
Visits
Family visits to the recovery room are limited, so as to prevent the risk of contagion and not tire you out. However, recovery room doctors and nurses will be glad to keep your family regularly informed of your state of health. Once discharged from the recovery room, you will return to the hospital for a few days. If you have any pain in your back or shoulders, tell us so that you can receive appropriate treatment. You will continue physiotherapy to help you breathe more easily and gradually start to walk again.
Blood transfusions
Modern blood salvage systems salvage residual blood from the surgical field or in the cardio-pulmonary bypass circuit to prevent blood loss and avoid blood transfusions in the vast majority of cases. If a blood transfusion were required, your doctors would inform you and order a blood workup three or four months after the transfusion. For many years, our team has specialized in bloodless surgery. We have operated on several hundred patients who refuse blood products.
Hospital-acquired infections
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are also known as nosocomial infections. While rare, they can be deadly. People with a hospital-acquired infection must quickly seek treatment and medical care. They may be quarantined for their own safety and that of other patients.
These infections are prevented by basic hygiene on the part of doctors, nurses, and paramedics, mainly by washing hands between contact with operated individuals.
Complications
If complications should arise during surgery, the surgeon and physicians have the duty to inform the family and the patient. Please do not hesitate to ask hospital staff about your condition. Do not settle for feeling unsure about your situation, treatment, or programme of care.
Dialogue between patients, their family, hospital staff, and the physician is fundamental to build trust and help patients get well.
After discharge from the hospital, you will either go home, back to your original cardiology ward, or to a cardiac rehabilitation clinic. Your goal now is to get your confidence back and gradually re-accustom your heart to physical exertion by walking every day.
Post-operative medical follow-up is crucial, and includes :
Dietary and other advice
Avoid eating:
Increase your intake of :
Address & Contacts
If you want to make an appointment or ask a question, fill out the form. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
- Centre Hospitalier Privé Parly 221 rue Moxouris 78150 Le Chesnay France
- Phone+33 (0)1 39 63 72 50
- Fax01 39 55 63 93
- Emailclaudevaislic@hotmail.com
