Upon waking up, patients who have just undergone heart surgery feel very thirsty and eager to drink water. This is a normal phenomenon. After the human body has been greatly traumatized, the endocrine system in the body changes, which can make people feel very thirsty. In the movies, people are always asking for water when they are seriously injured, for the same reason. But the patient is in the hospital, there are medical staff supervision, there is intravenous infusion, the patient usually will not lack of water. So this thirst is false. At this time, if you drink too much water, the water enters the intestine and is absorbed into the blood vessels and becomes part of the blood, the blood volume will increase, and the burden on the heart will increase. Early post-surgical patients are often combined with hypoproteinemia, and this excess water runs into the tissue interstitium, leading to interstitial pulmonary edema. The patient’s symptom is the inability to lie down. As soon as they lie down, they cough up clear foam similar to saliva. Individual patients even develop acute cardiac insufficiency. So, drinking too much water after surgery can lead to many problems. Water is very important for recovery after surgery. Patients need water to quench their thirst, bring in food, and carry out waste products from the body. Without a certain amount of water, the patient will not recover well. So, how much water is the right amount to drink in a day? How to drink it? By “a day”, we mean 24 hours, not “from morning to night” as commonly believed. All the water that enters the patient’s body, including infusion, drinking water, porridge, soup, noodles, fruits, yogurt, etc., should be counted as “intake”. For the average adult, if there is no profuse sweating, profuse urination, diarrhea, etc., the total intake per 24 hours should be controlled at about 2000 ml. Drinking should be done in the same way as drinking white wine, using a small medicine glass, a small amount at a time, evenly distributed throughout the day. Never drink from a glass of water or take a straw. Family members should keep a pen to record the amount of each food and water at a time. If you drink too much water, you will have to diureze to get rid of the excess, and you may have to transfuse albumin to increase the plasma colloid osmotic pressure. This will interfere with the patient’s sleep, may lead to hypokalemia, and will increase costs. Regarding the question of meal as the saying goes, man is iron, meal is steel, a meal is not eaten hunger. After heart surgery, the patient loses blood and injures flesh, and must have enough nutrition to recover. After surgery, some patients have no appetite and do not want to eat. Family members should encourage the patient to eat, do something that the patient likes, tasty and nutritious food. These foods should be animal protein-based, including a variety of lean meat (chicken, duck, pork, beef and mutton can be), eggs (especially egg whites), yogurt or milk (but the water content is large), to avoid eating too much starchy food, do not have to eat turtle, pigeon, chicken and other “supplements”. Eat six or seven minutes of fullness can be eaten every meal, you can eat five meals a day, eat more meals. If you eat more than one meal, the digestive system will be overburdened, which will aggravate the burden on the heart and may also affect breathing. If you have a poor diet and are malnourished after surgery, you will be forced to have intravenous infusions of highly nutritious fluids and albumin, and your medical expenses will be much higher. After heart surgery, there will be some phlegm in the lungs, trachea and bronchial tubes. If it is not eliminated in time, it will affect the gas exchange in the lungs, resulting in hypoxia or carbon dioxide retention. Therefore, it is important to remove phlegm in a timely and thorough manner. There are three measures for expectoration, one is effective coughing, the second is physical therapy (turning and patting the back), and the third is nebulized inhalation. The patient has just undergone surgery, the wound is painful, coughing and physical therapy will aggravate the pain. The solution to this is to use an elastic rib immobilization band. There are many brands of these immobilizing straps, such as LP, and they are available at many drugstores and sporting goods stores. Get the right size and tie it around your chest, as close to your armpits as possible, not around your abdomen. It should be tied slightly tighter to give the band some force. The sternum, which was sawn lengthwise during surgery, is held in place by stainless steel wire. Factors such as osteoporosis and violent coughing may cause the wire to cut the sternum off. This can be avoided by using rib fixation straps. In addition, the patient’s active postoperative activities out of bed can significantly improve the condition of the lungs and avoid respiratory complications. Wound pain is inevitable and pain medication can be taken if necessary. Regarding the problem of bowel movement fasting before surgery, eating less and being less active after surgery results in some patients not having bowel movement for several days after surgery. When the stool is retained in the colon for a long time, the water in it will be absorbed by the intestinal wall and the stool becomes dry, resulting in difficulty in defecation, and individual patients even need to pick out the stool with their fingers. Therefore, after the operation, you should actively defecate every day, not necessarily a lot, as long as it is clean. Patients can increase the amount of fruits and vegetables (diabetics can only eat more cucumbers, tomatoes), more crude fiber. If necessary, you can take laxative drugs or use corkscrew. On the issue of sleep some patients are older, sleep itself is reduced, after surgery back to the ward, during the day, a short nap, three or four times a day. At night, can not sleep, tossing and turning, affecting the rest, the next day no spirit, daytime sleep again, affecting eating and out of bed activities. Finally simply sleep upside down. The solution, one is not to sleep more during the day, and the second is to take sleeping pills at night. Some patients actually drink too much water and cough as soon as they lie down, affecting their sleep. These patients must be treated by the doctor on duty. With regard to pain most patients undergoing cardiac surgery have a median sternal incision. After the sternum is sawn longitudinally, the wound has to be held open with a spreader, and patients with coronary artery bypass grafts also have to have their left side of the chest wall elevated to free the internal thoracic artery. Therefore, in addition to the sawing of the sternum, there will be some contusions and even small fractures of the chest wall tissue. Postoperative pain is destined, the degree can vary, and forcing it is not necessary. For 24 hours after surgery, the average patient does not feel pain because the effects of the anesthetics (mainly fentanyl-based drugs) have not yet worn off from the surgery. However, starting the next day, the pain becomes intense. The key to alleviating this pain is the aggressive application of morphine-based analgesics, either orally, by injection or continuous pumping. Don’t worry too much, as it is controlled by healthcare professionals and very few patients develop drug addiction as a result. This type of pain medication is used in large, wide-ranging quantities worldwide each year, and there is no evidence that it adversely affects the patient’s brain. If the patient does not have severe respiratory insufficiency or severe vomiting, the pain medication can be used without fear of some unlikely side effects. Regarding the issue of fever if there are no infectious lesions in the heart, heart surgery is generally a sterile procedure. However, almost 100 percent of patients will develop a fever after heart surgery. If there is no infection, this fever usually lasts for 3-4 days and can last up to 2 weeks. The causes are analyzed as the effect of extracorporeal circulation on the body and the absorption of residual blood, fluid and necrotic tissue in the body. This fever is significantly different from that caused by infection. First, the patient’s temperature is usually around 37.5 C°, most do not exceed 38.0 C°, and those above 38.5 C° are very rare. Second, the patient does not have chills or chills prior to the onset of fever and usually feels slightly warm. Third, the patient has no symptoms of toxicity, such as lack of appetite, peripheral body aches, generalized weakness, and depression. Fourth, antipyretic drugs such as indomethacin and Tylenol are very effective. Fifth, the patient’s blood image is not high. Therefore, there is no need to be nervous about the patient’s postoperative fever, as long as he pays attention to the above, measures his temperature properly, and truthfully tells the doctor how he feels. After surgery, there are many artificial foreign bodies in the patient’s heart (such as artificial valves, patches, shaped rings, sutures, etc.), and once there is a microbial infection, there is a possibility of infective endocarditis, which may lead to serious complications, so the doctor will apply antibiotics prophylactically during the surgery and after the surgery. If the doctor determines that the patient’s likelihood of developing an infection is higher than normal, antibiotic treatment will be intensified.