Heart Valve Repair/Replacement Surgery

What to Expect

After the Procedure

• The Acute Care Unit - Your recovery will continue to progress here. You will sit up in a chair for your meals. Your diet will be advanced to solid foods as tolerated, but you may be on a low-salt, low-fat, low-cholesterol diet. If you have not been on this type of diet before, you can request to talk with a dietitian.

  Your heart rhythm may continue to be monitored by telemetry, which is a type of "long-distance" heart monitoring. You will have electrodes on your chest attached to a small box with wires, which you will wear at all times. The small box sends your EKG signal to a central monitoring station on the nursing unit, which is monitored constantly by trained staff. You can get out of bed and move around while you are being monitored by telemetry.

  You will begin to walk around, first in your room, then out in the hall for increasing distances. Your nurse or an assistant will assist you until you reach the point where you can walk around without assistance.

  You will continue to cough and perform deep breathing exercises and use the incentive spirometer every two hours or so while awake. You may stop wearing oxygen tubes once it has been determined that your oxygen levels are stable without them.

  Your IV line and the pacing wires will be discontinued within a couple of days after you leave the ICU.

• Requirements for Discharge
  Your nurse and other hospital staff will begin to give you and your family instructions regarding how to take care of yourself when you go home. It is very important that you ask questions if you do not understand something or if you need additional information. When you have reached the following milestones, you will be discharged to go home:
  
  
  • can sit up in a chair for all meals
    
    
  • can ambulate (walk) for about 200 feet without excessive increase in heart rate or heart rhythm changes, shortness of breath, or extreme fatigue
    
    
  • heart rhythm has been stable for at least 24 hours
    
    
  • no fever
    
    
  • food intake is adequate
    
    
  • have not required oxygen for at least 24 hours
    
    
  • all discharge instructions have been received
    
    
• Length of stay - In general, patients go home within a week of their heart surgery. Patients who do extremely well after surgery may go home three or four days after surgery. However, your individual situation will determine how long you stay in the hospital. People who have conditions such as diabetes, lung disease, kidney disease, or those who have previously had heart surgery tend to take longer to recuperate.
  
  
• Recuperation time - It may take about six to eight weeks before you feel like yourself again after the surgery. For some people, recovery may take more or less time. The length of your recuperation will depend on your individual situation.

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