Recovery after surgery is one of the few things which, if taken lightly, can take you back to the surgery board. As a process too, surgery and the time you take to recover through it can drain a lot of energy from you.

As far as the recovery time is concerned, it varies from person to person, and how quickly their body starts adapting to life after surgery.

There are multiple factors that can impact the timeline for your healing, including the kind of surgery you went for, your health from an overall perspective, people who are behind you for support, and how much you are motivated to recover. Your activities at the time of recovering after the surgery can either speed up the recuperation or slow it down.

In this post, we will offer a few tips on what you should do, and what you should not do to ensure the right recovery after surgery . It gives you answers to everything you can do to take care and wade through the post-surgery pain and how soon you can resume your normal activities.

Top Recovery After Surgery Tips

How to heal stitches faster after surgery? What to eat after surgery to heal faster?

These are a couple of many questions that are obvious to pop in your mind when it comes to post-surgery care.

Here are a few tips that you should do to ensure a proper recovery after your surgery:

Take Extra Care to Keep Infections Away

Preventing infection is the best way to ensure that your surgery brings the best outcome for you as soon as possible. For instance, keeping your hand away from the incision, or washing it before touching it, if need be, is a pretty simple thing that you can do.

While infection in the surgical area is rare, 30 days is the timeline within which it can occur. So, it’s recommended that you ask your surgeon about what you can do to ensure that your skin stays away from the risk of getting an infection.

Never Miss Your Follow-Up Appointments

After getting done with your surgery, follow-up visits are common, and are recommended for two to six weeks after their surgery.

While the two-week follow-up will involve the surgeon removing any stitches to ensure that the stitches have healed properly, the sixth-week visit, the incision will mostly be healed. In case that doesn’t happen, there might be the need for another follow-up.

Value and Care For Your Incision Properly

A lot of people go too far away to take too much care of their incision, keeping it clean. They try to scrub the area so that there are not any chances of infection. Some even go to the lengths of using peroxide or alcohol as well.

Don’t do this!

Unless your surgeon has specifically instructed you, a gentle soap and water wash will work just fine to ensure that your incision is taken care of. There are many surgeons who recommend taking showers instead of long baths, and even advise to not go swimming during the early days of post-surgery. You can check with your surgeon in case there is something else to look after.

Keep a Proper Diet

One of the most pressing questions is: what to eat after surgery to heal faster?
While losing appetite is an obvious thing after surgery, feeling constipated or nauseated are also a couple of pretty common feelings.

It’s important to understand that staying properly hydrated and following a healthy diet after your surgery promotes healing and also reduces the chances of any complications during the process. Following something as simple as drinking water quickly after your surgery can reduce the impact of anaesthesia too.

Protein plays an important role in facilitating tissue healing and repair. A number of other nutrients are also crucial, such as:

●   Minerals like selenium, zinc, and copper
●   Antioxidants like Vitamins A, C, and E
●   Omega-3 fatty acids
●   Vitamin D

Even if you are struggling with appetite, you can consider eating supplements and high-protein shakes.

Keep Your Pain in Control

Managing your pain and keeping it in check is crucial after your surgery. Despite that, a lot of people hesitate in taking the prescribed medicines post their surgery. Not taking care of your pain can lead to serious complications later on. For instance, too much coughing after your surgery can lead to pneumonia.

Modulating your pain during the recovery process is crucial so that you can recover according to the expected timeline.

What Not to Do After Surgery?

While the tips we mentioned above help you to recover quickly, here are also a few things that you should not be doing at all:

Overdo Things

Trying to do too much too soon after your surgery can take you back by quite a lot. It’s important to follow the instructions of your surgeon, and take timelines very seriously in the process too.

Other than that, listen to what your body has to say. Fatigue and pain are signals that tell your body to slow things down a notch!

Forget Your Medicines

Antibiotics, blood thinners, or other medication are a few medical items that you need to take. That’s where it’s important to ensure that the medicines offer you the right impact.

You can’t forget them, and it’s recommended that you keep a log so that it helps you keep a proper track of your prescriptions.

Conclusion

As far as post-surgery tips are concerned, following the instructions by your healthcare provider is absolutely crucial for a proper recovery. Other steps also are also pretty important, and you should maintain a balance for the perfect recovery post surgery.

At Purple Heron, you get an expert and professional team of surgeons that offer you the best guidance and recommendations, not just for your surgery, but ensuring proper recovery as well.

What is Microsurgery?

In terms of a definition, microsurgery refers to the medical procedure that requires a microscope to be administered effectively for viewing and operating on it. Such body parts can be tissues, blood vessels, nerves, and tubes.

Microsurgery procedures are typically performed on areas like the nose, throat, and ear as they have delicate structures, and opening them up for regular surgery doesn’t seem a prudent option. The procedure, involving the use of an operating room microscope, isn’t a first preferred choice for the treatment of reconstructive issues.

However, it’s used to take care of complex issues in place of other issues such as skin grafting, primary closure, or regional and local flap transfer.

Types of Microsurgery Procedures

There are multiple surgical procedures when it comes to microsurgery. Have a look:

●   Head and neck reconstruction with free tissue transfer
●   Breast reconstruction with free tissue transfer
●   Complex wound reconstruction
●   Vascularized bone flap transfer
●   Toe transplantation
●   Lymphatic reconstruction
●   Digit replantation
●   Nerve repair and grafting

What does Microsurgery Take Care of?

With a microsurgery procedure, you can expect to get treated from:

01. Effects of cancer
02. Physical trauma or wounds
03. Birth abnormalities

The need for microsurgery can also arise if you’re looking to:

01. Get an amputated body part reattached to your body (limb preservation)
02. Reconstruct microscopic regions of your body such as nerves and blood vessels.
03. Rebuild those areas of the body that went through trauma or surgery.

It’s important to understand that microsurgery is an option that’s available when other traditional ways of surgery aren’t as effective.

What Different Instruments are Used in Microsurgery?

Each instrument is specifically designed to be used in microsurgery, given the complex nature of its treatment. These instruments are more than capable of going through complex microscopic regions in the body, aiding the surgeons to do their work effectively and deliver the best results.

Some of the instruments used in microsurgery are given below:

●   Needle holders
●   Forceps
●   Scissors
●   Irrigators
●   Clamp applicators
●   Standard tools for surgery
●   Vessel dilators
●   Vascular clamps to regulate bleeding
●   Special needles and threads

Microsurgery Procedure Details

Before Microsurgery

Before undergoing a microsurgery procedure, you’ll be meeting a surgeon for the first consultation. In this meeting, a surgeon learns and gathers important information about you and your health, and tries to understand the expectations you have from the microsurgery procedure.

The surgeons might also click photographs of the regions on which they’ll be supposed to work, so that they can compare the before and after treatment appearance of the affected areas.

This meeting will also involve your surgeon discussing about the potential risks and effects involved with the surgery, updating you about the steps you’ll be needing to take to ensure proper care, as well as discuss the follow-up procedures with you.

For any queries that you might have about the microsurgery procedure, this meeting is the perfect time to get them sorted.

During Microsurgery

A typical microsurgery procedure will involve you being put to ‘sleep’ by administering a general anesthesia, so that you don’t feel any pain when the procedure gets underway. A microsurgery procedure takes place at the hospital, where your surgeon will be present.

Each microsurgery procedure is different, depending largely on what the surgeon is supposed to do. For instance, if you’re undergoing a tissue transfer, then your surgeon is going to remove a healthy portion from the donor site on your body. The new tissue is then reattached to the new area by making an incision as well as reattaching the blood vessels there by using a microscope. Once the tissue transfer procedure is completed, the surgeon closes the incisions with removable stitches or dissolvable sutures.

After Microsurgery

The course of treatment after getting a microsurgery done depends upon the type of microsurgery you elected to get the treatment for. If you went for a flap reconstruction, for instance, your team will be monitoring your flap diligently to ensure that your newly connected blood vessels are working in a proper manner. That’s because the first 24 hours are critical to monitor the blood vessels after the surgery is completed.

What are the Benefits of Microsurgery?

The biggest benefit of microsurgery is that it restores the normal functioning of the affected region in the body.

Other benefits include:

01. Cleaner and smaller incisions
02. Minimal tissue handling
03. Lesser haemorrhage (bleeding)

All these benefits lead to faster healing from the surgery, and a highly satisfying outcome.

Potential Risks with Microsurgery

Despite the benefits it offers, there are a few potential risks associated with microsurgery. They are:

01. Bleeding
02. Numbness
03. Pain, infection, and swelling
04. Tissue loss
05. Scarring
06. Requirement of more surgeries

How to Prepare for Microsurgery?

Before heading over for microsurgery, you might be asked to undergo lab testing or a medical evaluation, consume some medicines, and undergo some lifestyle habits such as stopping the consumption of alcohol, smoking, and stop with anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin, as they could lead to increased bleeding.

Recovery From Microsurgery

The amount of time you’ll need to recover from the microsurgery procedure depends largely on the type of surgery you’ll be undergoing. Based on that, your surgeon will discuss the estimated recovery time for you.

Other than recovery, what’s also important is to note that despite its multiple benefits and advantages, the success rate for surgery and the impact of its outcome varies from person to person, for which the best information can be offered to you by your surgeon.

In case you see any visible side effects after your surgery, such as bleeding, pain or swelling, you need to consult your surgeon back again, immediately.

The symptoms for this emergency visit include, but are not limited to:

01. Irregular heartbeat
02. Chest pain
03. Trouble in breathing

Consult the Right Experts for Your Microsurgery Requirements

If you’ve decided to get a microsurgery procedure done, then the experts can help out. The surgeons are backed with years of professional experience, delivering immaculate surgical treatments and procedures spanning across all regions in the body.

Schedule your first consultation!

also read our blog on “How Does Minimally Invasive Microsurgery Work?”

Recovery time is one of the most time consuming aspects right after a surgery.

Take the instance of a spine surgery a few years back. It often involved making large, deep incisions to open up the region of the spine where the surgeon was supposed to perform surgery. The dependency of surgeons for such an exposed region was a pretty normal thing back then.

This spine surgery came at a cost too.

The large and deep incisions meant a lot of damage to the healthy tissues.The fact that muscle tissues take their own sweet time in healing is another add-on, taking much longer than the original structure recovery. Apart from all of that, larger incisions also carry the risk of getting infected as well.

This is where microscopic surgery, or minimally invasive microsurgery has been changing the surgery scene for quite a while now.

What is Minimally Invasive Microsurgery?

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is a surgery approach that is aimed at minimizing the number of cuts or incisions in your skin and tissues. Today, surgeons use these MIS techniques to ensure minimal trauma during the surgical procedure.

With smaller incisions, there is less potential of your treatment being painful, surgery complications, as well as time taken for the recovery. Today, a lot of healthcare providers perform many common procedures using these MIS techniques.

Why is Minimally Invasive Surgery Performed?

MIS came around during the 1980s, providing a safe way to practice surgery for many people. Since the last two decades, it has become the preferred choice for surgeons over open surgery.

MInimally Invasive Surgery cuts down the need for staying at the hospital for a long time after surgery, while also taking away the chance to make larger cuts in the body.

How Does Minimally Invasive Microsurgery Work?

In the case of a spinal surgery, no natural opening leads to accessing the spinal structures. This is where Miminally Invasive Microsurgery comes into play, depending on little incisions in the skin to gain access to the spine.

Using the Tubular Retractor

The tubular retractor makes it possible to push muscle, rather than cut it, simplifying the surgery and reducing the recovery time. It provides a way to dilate the muscles in the concerned region, allowing cameras with the access to the affected area through a very small incision in the skin.

Stabilization Placements

Surgery stabilization is a process through which some procedures are facilitated where screws and rods are used to hold the spinal cord bones in place while they are healing. They are placed through the skin with minimal incisions.

Lateral Access

There are a few ways to approach the spine surgery without hampering direct areas of the back. In some conditions, this access can be from the side as well, where the muscle cover is comparatively limited. At Purple Heron, the experts can make use of a retractor to gain access to the vertebral sides, which is the preferred position for some of the surgical procedures.
In the lateral approach, the entry is done through the chest by making multiple small incisions for support to the camera and other required tools for surgery.

What are the Types of Minimally Invasive Surgery?

Let’s have a look at the different types of minimally invasive surgery below:

Keyhole Surgery

Most of the minimally invasive surgery procedures make use of small, keyhole-like incisions in the skin to serve as entry ports for treating the concerned body areas. Depending on the affected region and the kind of treatment needed, these incisions can be half-inch long or less. One keyhole acts as the entry point for an endoscope, which is a short tube with a camera to project the feed on the screen during treatment. Surgeons do their work from the other port, by referring to this feed.

Endovascular Surgery

This type of surgery involves the use of a catheter through the blood vessel and performing the operation through it. Just one little incision is enough to access the blood vessel. In most of the cases today, surgeons just need to puncture the skin with a needle and not cut across the blood vessel in the first place. This is done so as to minimize the bleeding.
Over a guiding wire, surgeons mount the catheter and then remove this wire after they have passed all the required instruments for operation.

Robotic Surgery

This is a highly advanced form of minimal surgery procedure where robotic arms are used to operate through small incisions. A trained surgeons performs the surgery through robotic arms by controlling them through a digital console in the operation theatre.
Robots allow for better accuracy as well as control in the affected areas.

Endoscopic Surgery

There are some endoscopes that can be easily entered into your body through an existing opening, like the nose or mouth. Surgeons can then make use of them through long and narrow tools without cutting your skin. This process is known as natural orifice endoscopy.

What are the Benefits of Minimally Invasive Surgery?

With small incisions, the scars from surgery tend to be pretty easy to control and remove. The added advantages of minimally invasive surgery are:

●   Reduced pain after the surgery has been administered, making the recovery a comparatively easier process than a traditional surgery.
●   Large, open areas make it tough to control the spread of infection. With small incisions, this risk of infection is reduced manifold.
●   If there’s a lot of pain, the number of prescription medicines also increase. MIS reduces the dependency on these drugs to ease the pain, as the pain is reduced due to these little incisions.
●   Each incision is made with pinpoint accuracy, which is why there is little to no damage in store for healthy muscle tissue in any way.
●   With minimal damage to the skin and tissue, the recovery time after a minimal invasive microsurgery process is greatly reduced.
●   Sometimes, traditional surgery aftermath involves pain in the affected as well as surrounding regions, bringing a need for physical therapy to the fore. That’s not the case with minimal invasive surgery.

When we talk about spinal microsurgery, the technology is still in its initial stages, and not all kinds of spinal treatments are possible with it at the moment.

Final Note from Purple Heron

From rehab medication to highly advanced surgical procedures, the expert surgeons at Purple Heron offer surgical procedures that are a class apart and as painless as they can be. With minimal exposure to skin muscles, the hassle is greatly reduced, not to mention the surgical trauma as well.

Book your consultation with Purple Heron and get a highly detailed plan to approach your surgery in the most professional and manageable way.

Having a set of strong and flexible muscles and joints is the best way to avoid any serious injury or strain. While this applies to all body organs, things become more crucial when it comes to the neck.

When the neck, upper back muscles, and chest muscles become tight or weak, your shoulders can become a little rounded, making your head tilt forward than how it normally should be. As a result, this poor posture leads to added stress on your spine’s joints as well as the vertebrae discs, including the muscles and ligaments.

To add to it, poor posture with the head too far than it should be can lead to chronic neck pain that can also lead to stiff joints, pain in the shoulder blade, and recurring headaches. The best remedy to ease neck pain is ensuring its consistent movement, and taking breaks from that computer screen.

Fortunately, there are multiple neck pain exercises at home that can help you relieve pressure on your neck and its surrounding areas, easing your neck pain.

What are the Different Types of Neck Pain?

As an overview, the following are the main types of neck pain:

Neck pain with headache, where the pain is accompanied by a throbbing headache at the back side of the head.

Neck pain with mobility defects, where the neck gets stiff due to sleeping in an incorrect position or lifting heavy weights.

Neck pains with radiating pains, which occur due to a herniated disc, or a cervical nerve compression.

Can Neck Strengthening Exercises Help with Pain?

Of course, neck strengthening exercises help a lot with pain in most cases, but it also depends on the cause of the pain. If the pain is the aftermath of some injury, then you might want to consult a doctor first before proceeding with your regime.

Neck pain can tend to be pretty uncomfortable and become a hurdle in different activities, and depending on its severity, it can also spread to other areas such as shoulders or arms. As far as treatments go, neck exercises are aimed at reducing the pain by:

●   Increasing joint movements for better motion
●   Increasing strength through posture improvement
●   Boosting flexibility in the muscles
●   Cutting down the neural tension

Exercises to Ease Neck Pain and Problems

We have divided exercises for cervical pain in the neck and shoulder into the following categories:

01. Muscle tension
02. Boosting postural muscles

Exercises to Reduce Muscle Tension

Properly stretching the neck can help you relieve the tension and improve its mobility.

Here are a few exercises that are great for easing neck pain by reducing muscle tension:

Neck Rotation

• ●  With a neutral neck position, rotate your head gradually to the left, giving the impression as if you’re looking over your shoulder.
• ●  Hold your position for a moment before turning your head back in the center.
• ●  Repeat the same on the right side.

Shoulder Roll

• ●  Begin by keeping your head and neck in a neutral position.
• ●  Lift both your shoulders in such a manner that your head and neck are not moving.
• ●  In a circular motion, move your shoulders forward and squeeze your shoulder blades together, releasing them and pushing them forward.
• ●  Now, repeat the same movement in the opposite direction as well.

Forward Bends

• ●  Lower your head a bit forward, towards your chest, and hold that position for a moment.
• ●  Gradually, move your head upwards then to a more neutral position.
• ●  Go through this motion multiple times.

Seat Twists

• ●  Get yourself seated on a chair with your back in a straight posture.
• ●  Put your left hand on your right knee and turn your upper body slowly towards the back, as if you’re looking behind at someone.
• ●  Return yourself to the center gradually.
• ●  Repeat the same twist now by keeping your right hand on your left knee.

Exercises to Reduce Muscle Tension

Posture muscles, that is, the muscles in your back, neck, and shoulders, might improve your neck pain recovery to help prevent injuries in the future.

The exercises include:

Head Lifts

• ●  Lie flat on your back. Then, stretch your arms to the sides of your body.
• ●  Tuck in your chin with a nodding movement.
• ●  Hold the pose for a few seconds before releasing it back to its neutral position.
• ●  Repeat the same motions multiple times.

Overhead Seated Presses

• ●  Sit on a chair or a bench with grip weights in each hand, keeping it level with your shoulders.
• ●  Push the weights towards an upward direction, while also extending your arms overhead.
• ●  Get the weights back to your shoulder sides before repeating the same motion.

Lateral Raise

• ●  Stand with your feet apart, aligned with the width of your shoulder, and hold a weight in each hand.
• ●  With your body kept still, move your arms in an outward direction till they get level with your shoulders.
• ●  Gradually, lower your arms back to the side and repeat the same motion.

Other Remedies to Relieve Neck Pain

As far as muscle strains in the neck are concerned, poor posture is one of the biggest causes of this discomfort.

Using a computer or phone while staying seated for long hours can lead to a forward head posture, where the head comes out a bit from the spine due to this posture. It triggers symptoms such as dull pain across the sides or the back, which might also spread to the head, shoulder, or upper back.

Adjusting the posture can lead to a reduction in pain in the neck, head, and shoulder regions.

In such cases where the neck pain hampers you, there are a few remedies other than exercises that could help you ease the pain:

●   Taking some anti-inflammatory medicines
●   Application of heat or ice packs on the affected areas
●   Using support for the neck such as a neck brace
●   Giving proper rest to the neck to avoid excessive strain

Conclusion

From a range of different causes, neck pain is a common issue in everyday life today. With proper treatment, this neck pain can be easily treated, completely. If you’re looking to get your neck pain completely taken care of, then Purple Heron Hospitals can help out.

With a superlative amount of experience, you’re going to be in the safest hands with their surgeons. You can connect with them for neck pain treatment!