BEFORE THE OPERATION ON BREAST CANCER: ABOUT SMOKING, OBESITY, ETC

Smoking

If you are a heavy smoker and have not been able to cut down or stop altogether, you will be advised not to smoke in the hours before your operation. It is, of course, much better to stop smoking some months before surgery. The carbon monoxide contained in cigarette smoke poisons the blood by replacing some of the oxygen which is carried in it and which is vital to processes such as wound healing.

Obesity

Obesity adds to the risk of anesthesia, and for this reason people who are very overweight should try to lose weight before entering hospital. Some surgeons are reluctant to carry out nonemergency operations on heavy smokers or obese patients as they consider the risks to be too great. However, starting a long, strict diet before your operation is inadvisable. The consultant will have assessed your weight when seeing you at your outpatients’ appointment, and will probably have given you some guidance at that time.

Waiting

It may seem that you have been admitted to hospital unnecessarily early, and you may find you have to wait on the ward with little to do. Apart from having to be seen by all the medical staff mentioned above, who are responsible for many other patients as well, time will also have been allowed for the assessment of any medical problems you may have, and for the results of any blood tests to be received.

Sometimes operations have to be cancelled at the last moment if an emergency has arisen and an earlier operation has taken longer than expected. Your operation may have to be postponed, perhaps for a few hours or until the following day, but as the stress a cancelled operation of this sort would cause is well understood, it is extremely unlikely that you would be sent home.

You will probably be given only an approximate time for your operation, being told if it is scheduled for the morning or afternoon. Surgery being done before yours may take longer than expected if complications arise.

Leaving the ward for your operation

Before being taken from the ward to the anesthetic room or operating theatre, you will be given a hospital operating gown to wear and will be asked to put on your anti-embolism stockings. A plastic-covered bracelet bearing your name and an identifying hospital number will be attached to one or both of your wrists. You will then be taken from the ward on a hospital trolley.

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