How should I prepare for spine reconstruction surgery?

Various things need to be done during the time prior to your admission to the hospital for spinal reconstruction surgery. You need to prepare your home so that your postoperative recovery period becomes easier. This means that you need to arrange frequently used objects at easily reachable height as bending, lifting, twisting, and stooping is not allowed during your recovery period. You may also need the following things:

• Ready-to-eat prepared meals
• Snug-fit T-shirts to be worn under your brace
• Adaptive equipments (an elevated toilet seat, a wheeled walker, long-handled reacher, and tub seat, a bench to be used in shower or bathtub)

Also, you will need someone to help you with laundry, cleaning, and grocery shopping for at least a few days.

In order to evaluate your general health condition before undergoing anesthesia, the following tests may be done:

• Blood and urine tests
• Chest X-ray/Flexion and extension spine X-rays
• EKG

It is important to follow these instructions while preparing to undergo spinal reconstruction surgery:

• On the night prior to your surgery, you should not eat or drink after midnight and on the day of your surgery, bring a list of routine medications that you take.
• Stop smoking at least two weeks prior to your surgery and up to six weeks after your surgery. This is because smoking interferes with the healing of your bone graft.
• You may donate blood for use during and after the surgery (autologous blood donation). For this, you need to take two iron tablets per day for one week before your blood donation.