Heart Hugger Blog

Complications after heart surgery are bad news for patients, but also for hospitals. Wound complications in a patient can be devastating financially for hospitals, especially when handling Medicare and co-morbid patients. The cost to hospitals can range from $13,000 to $100,000 per complication. Then add on the financial penalties that hospitals face for having excessive readmissions according to the 2010 Affordable Care Act. It’s evident that there is a great need to reduce the chances of complications following a patient’s surgery.

If you were a character in a book, what would a chapter about your daily life look like? You've read chapters like these about your favorite fictional characters; it is the "average life" portion of the story, the part where everything is normal right before things change and the journey begins. What would your chapter look like? For example, what would you eat for breakfast? Which clothes would you put on? Would you feed a dog, or would you feed a cat, or both? What kind of car would you drive? Where would you go? These are all aspects of your life; but, just like in the stories, your current life becomes your "old life" when a journey begins--a journey like surgery. Managing pain after a sternotomy is one big part of that journey, and it is the part that's going to change your chapter the most.

Are you experiencing poststernotomy pain? Study results show that pain after sternotomy is more than just nerve damage.