Surgical Consent
You will be asked to sign a surgical consent form before your surgery. This form
gives consent to the surgeon to perform your surgery. Please make sure that you
understand your surgery, risks, benefits, and options before signing the form. It is
important that you fully understand the information and are an active partner in
your care.
Getting Your Lungs Ready for Surgery
Having your lungs working at their best before heart surgery is very important.
When you have an incision on your chest, you may not breathe as deeply and
mucus can build up in your lungs. This, along with anesthesia and lying flat during
surgery for a length of time, increases your chance for lung infections.
To protect and strengthen your lungs before surgery:
• Stay active. Exercise helps to strengthen your breathing.
• Avoid people with coughs, colds, and other infections.
• Use your incentive spirometer if you have been given one. See pages 26-27.
• If you smoke, stop. Smoke is harmful to your lungs and needs to be avoided to
reduce your risk for infection.
Quitting Smoking
It is very important that you quit smoking before your heart surgery and continue
not to smoke afterward. Not only does smoking affect your lungs and breathing,
it also increases your heart rate and narrows the size of your arteries and vein
grafts. Talk with your doctor about quitting and medications to help you. Ask for
the Mount Carmel Quitting Smoking folder, which includes ways to succeed in
quitting smoking and staying smoke-free. See page 57 for more resources. You can
quit smoking, and this is a very important time to quit.
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