Hi, I’m Dr. Kyle McClintock. I’m a shoulder and elbow specialist in Northern California. Today I just wanted to go over some quick information with you regarding preparation for your surgery.
At this point, we’ve met, we’ve talked about your diagnostic studies, we’ve done a physical exam, and you have demonstrated that you failed conservative treatment and have elected to proceed with surgery. I know that comes with a lot of questions, a lot of concerns as a patient, and sometimes the process can seem a little bit daunting because this is new territory for you. I just wanted to kind of go over some of the processes that we have in place to kind of help make this process as seamless as possible and really help you feel comfortable as you prepare for surgery.
As we have discussed in the past, and as I’ve discussed with you and your clinic visit, every patient is a little bit different in regards to their background, their medical history, and what is going to be required for preparation for surgery itself. We have a little checklist that we will be going through with each of you. Our staff here in the office do an excellent job of reviewing your medical history.
I go over your medical history with you, and we start to set the stage for a successful surgery by making sure that we have everything organized beforehand. Some of those things include the necessary lab work. You’ll receive orders to have an EKG done or some basic lab work. Depending on your medical background, your age, and some of your other medical conditions or medications that you may take sometimes will require that you meet with your primary care physician or a cardiologist or other specialists that may be involved in your chronic medical conditions so that we can get clearances from them and make sure that those conditions are stable and that they’re being managed appropriately, and that you’re healthy and safe to undergo an anesthetic procedure.
The other thing that we’ll go over is for patients who are taking blood thinners, whether that’s for a chronic medical condition, a history of a blood clot, a heart disease problem, whatever the underlying problem is. We go over the process for stopping those medications about a week before surgery so that we can safely proceed with surgery and not worry about blood loss or compromising those other medical conditions. As you recover from surgery and getting you back onto your normal medical medications and regimens after the procedures performed.
The other thing that we do, depending on the surgery that you’re having, if it’s an arthroplasty or a joint replacement type procedure, a lot of times, we will have you meet with one of our therapists before surgery. We call it prehab to kind of help demonstrate the exercises that you will be doing in the recovery phase after a joint replacement surgery. They’ll also be doing some surveys around the house to make sure that things are set up in an orderly and convenient fashion to help you maximize your ability to have a successful recovery and make sure that there are no hazards that would complicate the recovery in any way, or, you know, be problematic for you moving forward.
We’ll also help make sure that simple things like arranging rides to and from facility are taken care of before surgery and that you have a competent network of healthcare providers in the home. These are close friends, family, sometimes a home health team from on our end that we help set up beforehand to come into the home and provide home health services after the procedures’ performed. Once we have all of those things checked off and we’ve gone through them, and we feel comfortable with what we’re doing, and you feel comfortable with what we’re doing, and we can go ahead and proceed with surgery.
I hope you guys found this video helpful, and please feel free to give us a call with any questions, concerns that you may have as you prepare for your surgery. And we look forward to taking care of you on the day of the procedure.
