Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I tell virtually all of my patients, there’s a couple circumstances that this is not true
for, but for virtually all patients we do today; that what they do after surgery they
can do anything they want aerobically. Meaning they can walk, they can climb up steps, they
can go up a hill. If they want to walk a half a mile or three quarters of a mile the first
day they leave the hospital that’ll be fine. It has to do with whatever incision they’ve
had and not lifting. We don’t want any grunting or straining. So that’s really the only
restriction in the first three to four weeks after surgery. So consequently we’ve had
patients who have been back to work in a week or two after surgery. We try to encourage
people to get back to their regular activities as much as possible within the confines of
not heavy lifting or any straining. The bone, if they have a traditional open heart surgery,
will heal just like a broken bone in the arm. Or you go to the orthopedic surgeon, you break
a bone, they put a cast on, leave it on for six weeks. Well your cast, if you will, is
the wires that hold the bone together on the inside. And those wires won’t be removed
but the bone will grow over and back together. But during that period of time where the wires
are holding the bone together the bone is knitting just like it would if it was a broken
arm bone or a broken leg bone. And that takes about four to six weeks to happen. So we’re
very cautious in that first four to six weeks. As I always say to my patients, we’re only
a phone call away. And what I mean by that is that we have one of us on call, one of
the staff surgeons are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a weeks, 365 days a year.
And we have a physician assistant that is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
365 days a year. So there really are two of us that know about heart surgery, post operative
heart surgery problems, what’s important, what’s not important, what you can ignore,
what you shouldn’t ignore. And when that patient places a call to our office at any
hour of the day you get the call back from the surgeon. We assess the situation and sometimes
they may actually see the PA the next day. Or that night in the emergency room. Or we
come in and see them ourselves.
For more information visit http://www.swedish.org/now-what/heart-surgery