PREPARING FOR SURGERY

Familiarizing yourself with what to expect upon entering a hospital may help to reduce the stress of an upcoming surgical procedure. The following points were highlighted in an effort to educate and therefore lessen the uneasiness sometimes caused by an anticipated surgery date.
Preoperative Testing:

• Most surgical procedures require preoperative testing, which includes a complete medical history and a physical examination. This can often be carried out by your primary care physician in his office.
• If general anesthesia is necessary for your surgery, most hospitals will also require you to have an EKG (heart), X-ray (lungs), and Urinalysis (kidneys) prior to your surgery date. A blood test is also required to check for relevant issues, such as infection and blood clotting abnormalities.

Admissions:

• Upon checking into a hospital, you will go directly to the admissions department where your insurance will be verified and a name tag will be applied to your wrist.
• If you are there to be admitted for a hospital stay, a room will most likely be assigned to you at this time.

Surgery:

• Patients are first taken to the preoperative holding area.
• While there, an anesthesiologist should come to speak to you and to start an intravenous drip of fluids.
• You are then transported to the OR where you will be placed on a narrow operating table.
• Present in the OR is a scrub nurse (hands surgeon surgical instruments and sutures), circulating nurse (there to help you and to obtain any required items that may not be present in the room), the surgeon and his surgical assistants.

Anesthesia:
General Anesthesia:

• Involves depression of the pain centers of the brain.
• An oxygen mask is placed over your nose and mouth and you will be asked to breathe deeply.
• An intravenous sedative will be inserted into the drip, you will probably be asked to count backwards from "10" and you will fall asleep.
• Once asleep, an endotracheal tube is placed in your windpipe through your mouth to more effectively control the administration of the anesthetic gases.
• Once your operation is complete, a dressing will be applied to the area and the level of anesthetic gas will be gradually reduced.
• When you are breathing on your own, without assistance, you will be transported to the recovery area where you will be closely monitored until the effects of the anesthesia have worn off. Nausea and occasional vomiting is a possible side effect of anesthesia.
• One of the main reasons why you are instructed not to eat for some hours before surgery is so that in case you vomit, no gastric contents might enter the windpipe while you are asleep (called aspiration), which can be very dangerous.

Regional Anesthesia:

• Involves remaining conscious. Effects are confined to a specific region of the body without affecting other areas, such as the heart, the lungs, or the brain. Anesthetic agent is injected directly to the nerves that serve the area of the body where the operation will be performed.

Local Anesthesia:

• Administered by needle injection into the immediate vicinity of the procedure.

Recovery:

• Coughing and walking are two of the most important things you could do for a speedy recovery
• Coughing helps prevent postoperative pneumonia o Walking helps prevent clots from forming in your veins You may be hooked up to continuous monitoring instruments, such as an electrocardiograph or gauges to measure central venous pressure, arterial pressure, pulmonary capillary pressure, and oxygen saturation. Each is designed to provide moment-to-moment information of your body's response to the stress of surgery. As you improve, the monitors are discontinued.
• General Anesthesia slows all body processes, including intestinal function. This is why food intake is limited for several days after major surgery; it takes more time for the intestine to "awaken" than it does for the brain.
• You will first begin to feel pain while in the recovery room. As the anesthesia wears off, you will begin to need analgesia (reduced sensibility to pain without loss of consciousness and without the sense of touch necessarily being affected).

Blood Transfusion:

• Transfusion therapy is now one of the safest of all major medical treatments.
• Donated blood is subjected to several levels of screening for contamination.
• Some patients request donations from close friends or relatives rather than turn to the public blood supply.
• Many patients opt to donate blood to themselves:
  • You donate as often as once a week beginning a month or so before scheduled surgery
  • Your physician will monitor your blood count and give you iron supplements as needed to ensure your safety

PERSONAL NOTES(PDF)
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS(PDF)
NOTES SHEETS(PDF