How To Prepare For Weight Loss Surgery

Obviously, your surgical consultation itself is the most important step you can take in preparing for your weight loss surgery. However, let's take a closer look at that consultation, as well as other important steps you can take to prepare for your surgery.

The Consultation Itself

While the consultation itself is the most important step in the preparation for your surgery, there are also important steps you can take to prepare even for the consultation! One of those steps is to make sure you have a list of current medications prepared to bring with you. You should include more than just your prescription medications, too. You should also include any over-the-counter medications you're taking, and any herbal remedies or other nutritional supplements. Another important thing to tell your surgeon is whether or not you know of any complications you or a family member have experienced involving anesthesia.

About Those Medications

The reason it's so important for your surgeon to know about the medications you're on before your surgery is that many of those medications can cause complications during the surgery itself. For example, even things as common as aspirin and vitamin E can increase the risk of bleeding. Birth control pills can increase the risk of blood clots, too. Not only can these (and other) medications cause complications during your surgery, they can also interfere with medications your surgeon may prescribe after the surgery itself. Whether your medicine was prescribed before or after your surgery, you may need to crush your pills for several weeks afterward. This is because of your now smaller stomach. Your surgeon will tell you which pills you need to crush and for how long. If he doesn't, ask.

Before The Procedure

Make sure you have somebody to drive you home from the hospital and drive you anywhere else you need to go for a few days afterward. In fact, you may want to consider ordering your circumstances far enough ahead of time to ensure that you'll be able to stay home as much as possible for several days after your release, because you're not likely to want to go anywhere anyway. Also, if you're a smoker, you should stop smoking for at least thirty days prior to your surgery. It will make your lungs more sensitive, and possibly result in pneumonia. Also, it really slows down your healing process. That's because it narrows your blood vessels so that blood doesn't flow as easily to where it needs to be in order for your body to heal itself properly. In fact, because of these reasons, some surgeons require blood and urine tests to verify the absence of nicotine prior to consenting to even performing weight loss surgery.

Following the advice in this article will serve you well in preparing for weight loss surgery, but this list is by no means exhaustive. As always, we can't emphasize too often the importance of following the advice of the medical professionals who serve you. He or she is likely to give instructions not included in this list. Make sure to follow all of them.

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