Contents:
- Medical Video: Surgery and Stenting Safe, Effective Lowering Long-Term Risk of Stroke
- What are the risks of surgery?
- Stop blood thinning medications
- Patients who have had a stroke before surgery
- Silent stroke
- What can I do to prevent postoperative strokes?
- Stroke after surgery, whose fault?
Medical Video: Surgery and Stenting Safe, Effective Lowering Long-Term Risk of Stroke
Is having surgery can increase the risk of having a stroke? The answer is: sometimes yes. This is why surgery, especially those that are not mandatory, must be considered carefully if you have had a stroke or have a risk of stroke. Your surgeon will discuss this with you. All operations have risks. However, if a stroke occurs afterwards, the doctor usually cannot prevent it.
What are the risks of surgery?
The operation itself has risks. The body often responds to anesthesia and surgical incisions with changes in blood pressure, heart function, blood sugar, and blood clots that can increase the risk of stroke. However, in some serious conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and vascular disease, the risk of stroke after surgery is not as high as the risk of a stroke that will occur if surgery is not performed.
Stop blood thinning medications
Because your body will be "opened" during surgery, you are usually asked to stop taking blood thinning medications a few days or a few weeks before your surgery schedule, because surgery will cause bleeding. However, people who need to take blood thinning medications such as aspirin to prevent strokes will usually have a higher risk of blood clots when they stop taking the drug. In the journal "Advances in Surgery" which was published in September 2014, it was stated that there is no easy solution to this dilemma, so the risk of bleeding during surgery must be weighed carefully with the risk of blood clots before surgery.
Patients who have had a stroke before surgery
Research shows that people who have had strokes have a high chance of having another stroke or other medical complications after surgery, compared with people who have never had a stroke before. An article published in "British Journal of Surgery" in November 2014 reported that the results of the study on 1.4 million patients who had undergone surgery (different operations), patients who had had a stroke 2 years before surgery had the risk of having another stroke or other surgical complications within a month after surgery, compared with patients who have never had a stroke before.
Silent stroke
Silent stroke aka "stealth stroke" can occur after surgery. Research published in "Annals of Thoracic Surgery" evaluated 19 patients who had undergone surgery and did not show symptoms of stroke. However, during brain mapping, 12 of them turned out to show signs of small strokes and "quietly". So it was concluded that having surgery can increase the risk of stroke, even if the patient does not show real symptoms of stroke.
What can I do to prevent postoperative strokes?
Below are some steps you can take to reduce the risk of stroke after surgery:
- Follow instructions and treatment carefully before and after surgery.
- Maintain health and avoid infection before your surgery schedule, so that you will not undergo surgery in a cold or a fever that will make the healing process longer.
- Avoid stress before surgery because stress can increase the risk of stroke.
- Do not smoke.
- Avoid drinking alcohol.
- Do not use drugs unless the doctor prescribes them.
- Take your medication according to the rules so that your blood pressure and blood sugar are well controlled before the surgery.
- Observe the schedule of consultation with the surgeon, schedule a pre-operative test, and schedule a routine check-up with your doctor, so that problems such as blood pressure or heart abnormalities can be detected and dealt with in a planned manner, without having to be an emergency.
Stroke after surgery, whose fault?
Stroke is one of the risks of surgery. So, if this happens, it is often unavoidable and is not anyone's fault. We always want to know what's wrong, however surgery makes the body experience stress. However, despite the risk of stroke and other complications, sometimes surgery remains the best choice.
