What causes breathing problems after open heart surgery?

Answer 1

Well, just coming out of open heart surgery myself five weeks ago, I can tell you a little bit about breathing porblems from it. In my case, I was on the heart/lung bypass machine for quite a while and on and off it twice. Basically, while doctors are performing the surgery on you, you are hooked up to machines that breath and pump blood for you(and oxygate that blood) so they can work on the heart at rest. While these machines are doing this for you, your own heart and lungs are not doing anything, which can lead to problems when they try to get them to start working again on their own. Usually everything goes well, but in my case, I had a collapsed lung for several days and had a very hard time breathing after surgery. It did eventually start working properly with my breathing exercises(spirometer), but I still have some fluid in the lungs five weeks later and am still having to use the spirometer and take diueretics to help get rid of the excess fluid. Your lungs are not designed to sit still and not work. They start to build up fluid in the lungs and can even collapse in the time they are not working like mine did. That's why they try to take patients off the heart lung bypass machine and remove the breathing tubes as soon as they can after surgery these days. Hospitals that do this have MUCH fewer complications and problems after surgery compared to those that don't. I didn't have much choice in my case as my surgery was very long and complicated. I did have the breathing tubes removed right away though after surgery and they even had me sitting up and in a chair that evening.