In addition to the responsibilities of your plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist, and the nursing staff, surgery involves certain obligations on the part of the patient to ensure a safe and uncomplicated experience. The following is a list of 3 preoperative guidelines that must be followed prior to your operation. While all may not apply to each patient, the pertinent ones will be confirmed by the nursing staff when you check in for surgery. If these are not followed, surgery will need to be rescheduled for your medical safety.
1. NOTHING TO EAT OR DRINK EIGHT (8) HOURS PRIOR TO SURGERY
This is an inviolate preoperative rule of surgery that, if misunderstood, may have life-threatening consequences. Food or liquids in the stomach may be vomited while being put to sleep, entering the lungs and causing a potential life-threatening pneumonia. For this reason, surgery is never performed without an empty stomach even if it is only a conscious sedation.
2. YOU WILL NEED TO BE TAKEN HOME BY SOMEONE AFTER SURGERY
Unless you are having a procedure under local anesthetic injections, the use of IV medication for sedation or general anesthesia requires that someone be available to take you home after surgery. It is simply not safe for you to drive home after an anesthetic. Taking a taxi home is also not permitted.
3. IF YOU ARE FROM OUT OF TOWN AND STAYING IN A HOTEL, SOMEONE WILL NEED TO STAY WITH YOU THE NIGHT AFTER SURGERY
It is not medically advisable to have you alone in a hotel room after any surgical procedure that required a general anesthetic. If you do not have someone, ask your surgeon’s office to help make arrangements to stay overnite in the surgery center or arrange for a caretaker to stay with you in the hotel. These arrangements will need to be made in advance.
These are the final checks to make sure your day of surgery goes smoothly.
Dr Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana