Having surgery?

How was anyone's experience with having a major surgery after being told they have SA?

I was in, and had a artificial ankle put in on Feb 27th.

I had a problem with the hospital, in hooking it up, without engineering coming to check it out. They didn't show. Nurses wouldn't let me use it.

I was in for two nights, by the time I left and got home, I was back to taking off the mask at night. It took me a month to get back into routine. Sleep doc was quite concerned, and started changing my meds, and pressures and wanted me back into sleep lab for another test. I put him off for a couple of weeks, increased the pressure, and got back to normal sleep hours WITH mask.

Good luck, if anything goes wrong..................BITCH loud and often.

I had emergency surgery last November to remove my appendix. The hospital also wanted to either check out my machine or get one of theirs in for me to use. Unfortunately my surgeon told me I had to wait the 5 days I was in the hospital before resuming my CPAP treatment. He was concerned about me using it but didn't specify why. I got the feeling he was worried because I was on a pressure of 18 cm/w at the time that it might give me problems because they had to cut me almost stem to stern.

The main thing is to inform all your doctors especially the one who will put you under that you have OSA. Besides monitoring you during surgery they have to be aware of possible problems during recovery due to the affects of some drugs on respiration. Nothing to be frightened of just be informed!

Dale

In my opinion, it would seem that the hospitals would want you to use your cpap. I would think that they would see that as a sort of speedy recovery bonus since the better you sleep the quicker you recover. I do however see the point of the hospital saying no for liability reasons. Lets hope I never need the hospital because they would have to sedate me big time to get me to go without my cpap.

Using your CPAP in the hospital should not be a problem. Just be aware that many hospitals have policies that require that all equipment used in the patient room be inspected by maintainance, Biomedical Engineering or Clinical Engineering. In many states it is State Law that anything used in the patient rooms meets certain requirements for safety. Do yourself and the hospital a big favor and make sure to have your equipment checked out as soon as you arrive. I have even had patients contact me days ahead to schedule a time that they could come in to have me do the required checks.

I have a similar concern - going to have gastric bypass sometime over the next six weeks.

I've been told by others who've gone to the hospital with their equipment that they don't get to use them, never get a clear idea as to why.

I assume it's the liability issue, and partly has to do with the particular surgery you're having performed. Some docs are wary of putting xPap on a new g-bypass patient due to risks of it putting too much pressure on the newly-formed stomach pouch. I've heard of cases where a Cpap user had to have emergency corrective surgery from this issue.

With my BiPap pressure set fairly high, I'll be talking to my pulmonologist about it next week at my surgery "check-off" appointment.

But, I'm told you don't really "sleep" much during recovery due to the prodding and poking. I'll have pulse-ox on the whole time and a mother who's an ICU nurse who'll be watching me like a hawk in addition to the other staff, so if I have an issue w/out my mask, it can be nipped in the bud.

The whole issue of xPap use in post-op is odd, because the sleep study was a requirement of my g-bypass initial workup...realizing it's an issue for anesthesia...but then they have an issue with letting you follow the advice of the referral they ordered when you're out of the o.r.? Just doesn't make sense on the surface of things....but I'll be finding out more soon.

Anonymous wrote:The whole issue of xPap use in post-op is odd,.................Just doesn't make sense on the surface of things

Years ago, they called it "CATCH 22"