In about a year I’ll (probably/hopefully) have a spinal surgery. A part of the recovery is a two day ICU stay, I suspect to keep a closer eye on complications and such. I will also ask my doctor about this, but that’s far off, and I’ve got medical trauma that makes me anxious way too long before. I’ve tried looking up how a planned ICU stay looks like, but can’t really find anything. Can someone here explain what it looks like? Will I (probably) be sedated/intubated? I’m nervous about being overstimulated. I’ve got autism, which makes it a bit more complicated than usual
(I hope it’s okay to ask this question. I know it’s not like, one about complicated subjects, but I’m not sure where else to ask, and I do need a dumbed down answer)
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Ask your Doctor for the specifics on the procedure. Different procedures require different levels of post operative care.
For spinal surgery it’s likely they need to look out for any complications like bleeding and blood clots. You will also be on serious pain medication so they need to monitor you closely, hence being in the ICU.
In the case of my friends father, he recently had open heart surgery to replace a damaged heart valve and that included a planned ICU stay.
In his case his sedation was very deep and the nature of the surgery meant that he had to be watched closed for several days after to make sure their were no complications.
It went fine, they kept him comfortable throughout.
I stayed 2 days in the ICU myself once due to complications from surgery. I needed to be on a ventilator for a while.
I was scared because they had me hooked up to a lot of machines, and I could barely move due to my condition.
The staff were great and helped me through it.
What helped the most was that I was on tranquilizers like ativan.
It zonked me out and helped the hours pass more quickly.
In my case though it was an emergency, since yours is planned you’ll have much more time to mentally prepare.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from ICU stays is that level of care and “ICU” are separate from each other.
I’ve seen ICU that is only about care ratio (nurses are often 1:1 or 1:2) while patients are little different than standard care. And I’ve seen patients that need some specific care (e.g. bipap) that can only be delivered in ICU but again they otherwise look like a regular care patient.
And then, of course, there are types of care and situations that are much more serious.
Quite likely, you’ll have no memory of it. They bring you into the ICU to slowly bring you out of GA under close supervision. Depending on the surgery this could take quite awhile perhaps upwards from 1-2 hrs. Most patients will not be very aware even after “waking up”. You’re most likely to be on some painkillers for quite a while.
I work for a large hospital non-profit and just had open heart surgery in July.
Planned ICU is for several things: pain management, supervised movement, but the big part is “return of normal body function”.
Depending on how invasive your surgery type, the anesthesia required, and the whole reason you were in there in the first place, the doctors and nurses need to make sure you can do things like: breathe on your own (coming out of sedation), that you can go to the bathroom on your own (pooping mostly, as anesthesia can affect bowel movement and, again, depending on your surgery type, doctors need to make sure they didnt nick something or miss something, which usually shows up in urine, stool, or with other testing that is done in the ICU, like blood draw or physical movement tests). They also want to make sure you can eat and drink normally.
You will probably be intubated coming out of sedation, just don’t panic. Breathe like normal and swallow slowly. The doctor doesn’t want you intubated any longer than you do, and they’ll get you off as soon as they can. You will still be sedation drowsy, so it helps if you have someone in the recovery area to remind you that you’re ok and not to mess with your tubes and wires.
Other than that, you are going to be bored and exhausted
Sleep when you can, expect to be wide awake at 3:30am for no reason, expect to be woken up at all hours of the day for tests and medication , and bring a book and/or portable electronics. Not sure of your mobility situation after surgery, so make those considerations for what you actually bring to the hospital.
Protip: be nice to your nurses even if they aren’t necessarily being nice to you. They can be the difference in a pleasant stay and an awful one.
It looks like a regular post-op stay, but with more machines.
It is highly unlikely you will be sedated/intubated, those things are generally last resort measures, not things good for the body.
You will almost certainly be on telemetry to remotely monitor your vital signs in real time (not a nurse coming in once every few hours to take your blood pressure)
You will likely also have a foley (urinary) catheter inserted so peeing is not something you have to get out of bed for.
I’m a physical therapist, I work with patients in the ICU frequently. You may or may not get a visit from a PT there, the surgeon might want to wait until day 2 or 3 to have PT get you up, but it WILL happen. Early mobility after surgery has overwhelmingly been shown to be for the best.
All in all, the ICU is actually way less chaotic than pretty much everywhere else in the hospital. It’s quiet, and you’ll almost certainly have a room to yourself. Even visitors are highly restricted.
I can only answer through experience, but if it helps:
In my teens I had surgery to remove a brain tumour and was in intensive care for a day or two afterwards. The ICU itself seems much like any other hospital bed, except there’s a lot more equipment and staff around.
As for sedation and intubation, I’m sure that will depend on your post-surgery needs. In my experience I was not sedated (except during the surgery of course) and the only things intruding my body were a catheter and an IV. There were probably some unintrusive monitoring devices attached too, but I don’t recall.
Of course I’m sure care will vary with the needs of the patient.
The specifics of the stay will heavily depend on how well you are doing and what your body needs after surgery, but here are some general things to consider:
Hi, doctor here. First off, we may not be from the same country so system might be different a bit, in my country we usually dont really have the term ‘planned ICU stay’, but rather a backup ICU bed/close ICU monitoring post op. So I assume its almost the same.
Usually when we do high risk surgery, which may have an immediate severe complications, we will monitor the patient in ICU for few days, cause ICU will have a one-to-one care. Anything that seems off will be handled almost instantly.
Either intubated or not, it depends if you can be extubated early or not. Post operative, for spine surgery (in general, unsure what surgery you will undergo), we will make sure analgesics is given. Rarely patient will be sedated for long since we prefer patient to be able tell us if anything feels wrong.
Most important thing when spinal cases are done is that we dont injure the spinal cord during the surgery itself. So with that in mind, we need to make sure all your bodily function prior to op need to function as soon as possible after the sedation is off. If by any chance something does not return, immediate assessment and intervention will be needed. And its time sensitive too (late intervention leads to lost of function), so thats why usually it will need ICU stay or in my country, very close, almost hourly monitoring of function for first 1-2 days.