Recovery room and Cpap

Has anyone had experience with cpap in the recovery room? I am not concerned about my stay in the hospital since I will have my machine. Seems the rule of the PACU is you have to show you can support a clear airway!! UMMMMMMMM not going to happen!!

6 years ago I had a hip replacement and had a horrible time in recovery. Wake up said hi to my family and fell asleep and immediately stopped breathing. Gasp for breath and set all the alarms off. This went on until I became fully awake. Awful experience.

Now I am facing another hip replacement and do not want to repeat the same experience. I want to be placed on cpap as soon as they exubate me not when I am full awake. So anyone ? What have your experiences been? Wondering how big a fight I have ahead of me.

You should discuss your OSA with your surgeon and the anesthesiologist before the procedure and they can make recommendations.

My last hospital stay which lasted a week and some ICU time they provided a BiPap machine for me along with FFM. I left my machine at home the entire week. The machine (very large) was wheeled around everywhere I went room to room along with a cluster of other stuff including the bed.

I was told to have mine available and woke up aware that the breathing tube was sticking out of my mouth without a machine to pump air in. They had simply left that part in to keep the airway open. Once I was fully awake and could grab the nurses attention I pointed to it and she reached over and pulled it out. I then had oxygen with nasal prongs to keep sats up until I could sit up and breathe better. Be sure the anaesthetist knows about your OSA. I hope you have a better experience this time.

I had surgery in March for a broken leg and ankle. I had a spinal so they wouldn't do the surgery until I had my cpap in the operating room, they also added an oxygen port to my machine. They gave me the spinal, laid me down, put on my mask and I didn't hear a thing The next thing I remember is being wheeled to my room and just had the regular oxygen prongs. I used my machine every night of the 5 nights I was there.

The rule of PACU is that you have to support a clear airway because you are AWAKE enough to do so. That's where you wake up. People with sleep apnea typically have no problems with their airways when awake.

Have you talked to your doctor about what type of anesthesia they plan to use? A common trend now is to add in a local or spinal block so that not as much general anesthesia is needed.

Had a surgical procedure last summer that required an overnight stay. Informed Dr. of XPAP use, and was encouraged to bring machine for use after recovery. Experience was positive.

I had outpatient surgery in December. Prior to surgery, I informed my doctor of my OSA. I also informed hospital pre-registration and spoke with the anesthesia department prior to surgery regarding my sleep apnea. I was told to bring my machine with me 'because the hospital had a whole procedure for OSA' ; I decided to bring my back up machine (which was less expensive), in case the machine was dropped or mishandled or lost.

I also showed family members who were going to be with me how to operate the machine and humidifier, and how the mask should fit (I brought a back up mask with me.) I had the titration pre-set and the mask adjusted beforehand.

Other than the hospital checking the machine hardware/ voltage (?), I was surprised to find they never took it out of the carrier and did not use it on me in recovery. I think this is because the anesthesia they used wore off quickly once I was no longer intubated.

However, I think they may have used a larger than normal intubation tube this time, because of the apnea. My throat hurt and was so dry, I had difficulty swallowing for the rest of the day. I had never had this experience with surgery before.

Just remember - you are the consumer and are paying them to complete the surgery and to keep you as comfortable and healthy as possible!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery

I had outpatient surgery a couple of years ago and they definitively put my cpap on me in recovery.
In fact who ever did it adjusted my head gear a little better than I had had it.

Be careful to talk to the right doctor. In any medical situation there is one doctor who is the designated God. I think "attending physician" is often the term used. His word is God and he needs to specify that CPAP gets used. It won't matter what the other doctors say if he doesn't get the word.

Just had the recovery from the nether regions. Don't remember anesthesia doing and history and physical. I talked about OSA and cpap but didn't get order. I took it to the hospital, there was a sticker on my chart, but it was never used. I spent hours, being yelled at by nurse, telling me I just needed to wake up. Deep, horrible anesthesia (my first general in 50 years, always opting for local or regional). after hours of this and who knows what oxygen sats, developed deep throbbing headache and vertigo...probably from hypoxia. I lost two extra days from work for recovery from recovery. I wish i could sue, but no way of measuring how many neurons I lost. I was very, very aggressive about talking to anesthesia the day before. Didn't help.

Curious, but did you have someone as an advocate? Relative? My wife would never put up with that.

Krelvin wrote:You should discuss your OSA with your surgeon and the anesthesiologist before the procedure and they can make recommendations.

I agree with this. They had my brother's bipap in recovery with him. Got him hooked up and then added oxygen to the bipap. They said this was pretty common. He does not have apnea, he has 70% lung capacity, so could have done ok raised up on plain oxygen, but they were happy to hook him up to the bipap.

There are instances where they don't use the machine in recovery, but will in your room. I didn't ask about those instances. A respiratory therapist checks your machine - a lot of them come in with damaged cords; that's what they are looking for. They don't go through any testing since you are regularly using it, it probably works.

I agree that a strong advocate is needed. When I was waiting to be taken to my septoplasty/turbinate reduction surgery, and not functioning optimally for obvious reasons, a family member stepped in and went to bat for me to make sure that everything was in place for the machine to be in the recovery room after surgery.

I mean, I had told everything possible about my needs but it still seemed like there were a bunch of clueless nurses in the preop area who didn't understand. And yes, even if the right doctors right the orders, there can still be screwups if everyone isn't on the same page.

Finally, on an off topic note, if the hospital forbids you from bringing your own machine as this one did, bring it anyway. I was to later find out that the floor nurses could have cared less if you had your own machine and by my not having it, it led to alot of difficulties on the floor.

49er

I had same-day surgery recently and was told to bring my machine. They did use it in recovery; I had really crappy respiratory drive waking up, and snoring like crazy when I did take a breath. Fortunately had the right kind of machine for that (ASV) . Machine-triggered breaths through the roof!

For future reference, even with Dartha helping I was still desatting significantly. It ended up as a choice between breathing on some regular basis and getting enough oxygen (she's not a ventilator, after all). So they were doing some swapping-off. Since there's no oxygen port on a standard tube and mask, I'm planning to get one of those thingys that goes between the tube and mask that has a port for an oxygen tube, in case I have to have surgery again.

They used one of those supra-glottal masks for anesthesia. Not a full intubation (not past the vocal folds) but it does make the throat sore. Not sure if that was because of the apnea risk or if it's SOP these days.

They intubated me on the 8th. My voice is still messed up!
TV commercials abound on painless (or nearly) catheters for the other end.
They spare no expense because if it hurts, it doesn't get used.
Apparently when you are unconscious they will shove any old thing down your throat.