What Happens After Heart Failure Surgery?
Surgery for heart failure might be recommended to your elderly family member for a variety of reasons, including helping your senior’s heart to function better. Some types of surgery may even treat the underlying causes of your senior’s heart failure. Here’s what you, your elderly family member, and their post hospital care team need to know about what can happen after her surgery for heart failure.
Types of Heart Failure Surgery
There isn’t just one type of surgery your senior may have because of heart failure. She may have a pacemaker or defibrillator installed to help with heart rhythm management, for instance, or she might have a catheter ablation, which is a completely different procedure. Other surgical procedures can include installing a stent, surgery on heart valves, or bypassing coronary arteries surgically. The type of surgery your senior needs depends on what is causing her heart failure.
Preparing for Surgery
Before your elderly family member has surgery for heart failure, her doctor will let her know what she needs to do to prepare. She may need to stop taking certain medications beforehand or adjust her diet. Your senior’s doctor will give her detailed information about what she needs to do. Following those instructions as closely as possible is important because they can help your elderly family member to avoid difficulties or complications during the surgery itself.
After the Surgery
Some surgeries may require that your elderly family member stays in the hospital so that her condition can be monitored closely. Other surgeries are outpatient procedures, which means that your aging family member is able to go home once she’s awake and cleared to go home. More complicated and invasive surgeries have a much longer recovery time. Make sure that you and your senior talk to her doctor about what she should expect afterward. This helps you both to have accurate expectations.
When to Be Concerned and Making Recovery Easier with Post Hospital Care Aides
Any surgery requires time to recover, of course. If your elderly family member is experiencing worsening symptoms or new symptoms related to heart failure, she should definitely contact her doctor. Other signs of trouble might include developing a fever, experiencing redness or signs of infection around the surgical site, and edema in the extremities.
One way that you and your senior might feel a lot better about her time at home recovering is to bring in post hospital care. These are home health care providers who are able to help your elderly family member to follow her doctor’s care instructions and watch for signs of complications. Having experienced post hospital care visiting your senior can help her to relax and to recover more easily. Your senior can also get additional hands-on help with daily tasks that might be more difficult right after surgery.
Heart failure surgery may not completely resolve all of the problems your elderly family member is having with her heart. The right procedure may do quite a lot to help her to be more comfortable and to reduce some of the symptoms that she’s been experiencing.
If you or an aging loved one are considering Post Hospital Care Services in Perry GA please contact the caring staff at Angels of Mercy Private Homecare Services, Inc. today at 478-745-5111.
Angels of Mercy Private Homecare Services is a Trusted Home Care Agency serving Macon, Warner Robins, Perry, Gray, Milledgeville, Forsyth, Cochran, Jeffersonville, Eastman, Fort Valley, and the surrounding areas.
Angels of Mercy Private Homecare has been providing in-home care services since 2002 throughout the Macon and Middle Georgia Area.
Angels of Mercy Private Homecare Services provides in-home care that improves the lives of the clients. Our services help them maintain the highest possible level of independent living. We provide In-home private duty care and care management services for seniors throughout the Middle Georgia area.
Our CNA (certified nursing aides), caregiver, and companion services allow our clients to age in the place where they feel most comfortable and secure - at home. Combine our Home Care Services, with our Geriatric Care Management component, and we provide the most comprehensive assistance for the Middle Georgia areas seniors.
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