{"id":6089,"date":"2011-05-26T19:41:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T00:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=6089"},"modified":"2019-02-26T20:21:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T01:21:23","slug":"preparing-heart-surgery-weight-smoking-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/05\/26\/preparing-heart-surgery-weight-smoking-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiac Pioneer, Dr. Larry Cohn, Offers Helpful Tips For Patients Preparing For Heart Valve Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During his 40-year career, Dr. Larry Cohn has performed over 10,000 cardiac procedures at leading heart centers including Brigham &amp; Women&#8217;s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Interestingly, Dr. Cohn is much more than a world renown surgeon, author and educator, he is also&#8230; a former aortic valve replacement patient. <strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, it was an honor to visit with Dr. Cohn at the recent <em>91st Annual American Association for Thoracic Surgeons Meeting<\/em> in Philadelphia. During our chat, Dr. Cohn addressed a common, patient question about preparing for heart surgery. Specifically, Dr. Cohn answered Fred&#8217;s question, &#8220;As I prepare for mitral valve repair surgery, should I maintain, increase or decrease my exercise program?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F4w6nspRniY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Fred for his question. And, a very special thanks to Dr. Larry Cohn for his commitment, dedication and pursuit of healthy heart valves. For the members of our community that are hearing impaired, I have provided a written transcript to this video interview with Dr. Cohn below.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 Hi, everybody.\u00a0 It\u2019s Adam and we are at AATS in Philadelphia very fortunate to be sitting here with Dr. Larry Cohn from the Brigham Hospital at Harvard Medical School.\u00a0 We got a question that came in from Fred and he writes in, \u201cAdam, I\u2019m scheduled for mitral valve repair.\u00a0 Should I maintain, increase, or decrease my physical exercise?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Cohn:\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a very good question.\u00a0 Many, many patients I see for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/mitral-valve-repair-surgery.php\">mitral valve repair<\/a>, they always want to ask me a question.\u00a0 What should I do to get ready for the surgery?\u00a0 And, in actual fact, many patients with mitral valve prolapse or mitral valve disease are in pretty good shape as it is. Many are actually asymptomatic, as you know.\u00a0 The basic principle I tell them is don\u2019t do more than than you do now.\u00a0 In fact, you ought to scale back a little bit because there\u2019s going to be a certain psychogenic overlay that you get a little nervous about having the surgery and that might increase your exercise and could elicit, perhaps, a little palpitation, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/atrial-fibrillation\/\">atrial fibrillation<\/a>, or something.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to do that.\u00a0 So you should go about your normal activity but might even downgrade your exercise just a little bit.\u00a0 If, on the other hand, you happen to be overweight, there\u2019s another exercise that you really ought to cut back and that\u2019s the one that\u2019s like this that puts food in your mouth because if you could lose five or ten pounds before the surgery, it\u2019s all about your faster recovery because you\u2019re a little bit lighter and easier to transport around. But having said that, I really would conclude that you cut down your activity by a little, may up to ten percent.\u00a0 Don\u2019t overdo it because you sometimes get in trouble if you have severe mitral valve prolapse. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/mitral-valve-prolapse-symptoms.php\">Click here<\/a> to learn more about mitral valve prolpase.)<\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 One question that comes up also is from the folks out there who are smokers.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Cohn:\u00a0 Bad.<\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 Bad?<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Cohn:\u00a0 Real bad.\u00a0 Smoking can in surgery, particularly heart surgery, is a very bad combination.\u00a0 We insist that all the patients that I do mitral valve repair are off of cigarettes for at least four weeks.\u00a0 The reason is that if you smoke, you have a chronic bronchitis and you\u2019re going to have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2008\/02\/14\/ventilator-tube-intensive-care-unit\/\">a breathing (ventilator) tube down<\/a> there for a couple hours for the operation.\u00a0 This can cause bronchitis or pneumonia.\u00a0 You absolutely have to get off cigarettes.\u00a0 That is just fundamental.\u00a0 We just can\u2019t have that.\u00a0 That\u2019s a bad \u2013 That\u2019s a real no no.<\/p>\n<p>Adam:\u00a0 Well, Dr. Cohn, I know there\u2019s a lot of patients out there who are watching this and on behalf of all of them, I just want to thank you for everything that you\u2019re doing.\u00a0 You have really made a difference in the lives of a lot of people.\u00a0 I\u2019ve talked to them and I just want you to know that we appreciate it.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Cohn: Alright, Thank you!<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-surgeons-clinics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}