Recover From Surgery The Fastest

Many ways to recover quickly from surgery have to do with strategies your gynecologic surgeon will work out for you. The type of surgery, the alternatives to surgery, and your overall health going into surgery are all important. Your surgeon know of things that might help: like minimize the use of drains and catheters, or the time those things are used; using the right kinds of antibacterial techniques, and performing the surgery efficiently as longer surgeries tend to lead to more issues. But there are a number of helpful interventions both before and after surgery you can help with to enhance your own recovery. In the surgeon’s world we call this Enhanced Recovery Pathways or ERP!

Here are a few things to know about how to recover from surgery quickly.

1. Before surgery review the materials and information you and your surgeon have gone over so that you get your questions answered and you understand factors specific to your case.
2. Correct nutritional deficiencies before surgery: the most common of these would be anemia
3. Make sure you have your blood sugar under control prior to surgery
4. Stop tobacco smoking
5. Hold off on aspirin or other blood thinners as directed
6. Special diets before the surgery are less likely to be recommended and in most cases you don’t need to do whole bowel clean outs with laxative use which now are thought to cause your body chemistry to be off and to cause you to be dehydrated. Neither of those things help you heal, you want to be well hydrated prior to elective surgery if you can.
7. Once you have had your surgery, you do need your bowel to wake up quickly. For some this may mean use of a laxative and this should be individually discussed with your surgeon.
8. When to have your surgery during a menstrual cycle is not usually an important factor, although some very small studies do suggest that it could be.
9. Get up and move! Avoid prolonged bed rest. Discuss with your physician if you are having problems following this directive!
10. Begin eating quickly after surgery. Within 4-6 hours you should eat. It’s usually not good to go over 24 hours without eating after a surgery.
11. And here’s a new recommendation you may not know. Chewing gum after surgery helps get the bowel moving as well!

At Women’s Health Practice we value your time, your rapid return to work and family, and want to offer you the best in medical evidence to have a healthy and full recovery from surgery.