Post-Surgery Care at Home in Lahore: A Family Guide

Hospitals in Lahore discharge surgical patients quickly, which is usually right — people recover better at home. But the family goes home with a wound, a bag of medicines, a follow-up date and, very often, no clear idea of what normal recovery looks like versus what is going wrong. This guide is written to close that gap.

Before you leave the hospital, get five things

1. 1The discharge summary, in writing. Photograph it before you leave the building.
2. 2A clear instruction on the wound: when the first dressing change is due, how often after that, and whether the dressing may get wet.
3. 3The full medicine list with doses and durations — particularly how long the antibiotic and the painkiller are meant to continue.
4. 4The date the sutures or staples come out, if any.
5. 5A phone number for the surgical team, and a clear answer to "what should make us call you?"

If a doctor is not available to answer these before discharge, ask the ward nurse. It takes five minutes and prevents most of the confusion of the following fortnight.

Looking after the wound

A healing wound looks slightly pink at the edges, may be a little tender for several days, and produces small amounts of clear or lightly blood-stained fluid in the first day or two. That is normal.

Dressing changes should be done with clean hands, sterile materials and the dressing your surgeon specified. Do not open the dressing out of curiosity — every opening is a chance to introduce infection. If nobody in the house is confident doing it properly, this is exactly the job to hand to a nurse; a dressing done well every second day for two weeks is the difference between healing and readmission.

Pain control — the mistake families make

Families in Lahore very often ration painkillers out of a reasonable fear of dependence, and it works against recovery. A patient in pain does not breathe deeply, does not cough, does not walk, and does not sleep — and those four things are how chest infections and clots are prevented after surgery.

Give the prescribed analgesia at the prescribed intervals for as long as the surgeon said, then reduce. If the prescribed dose is not controlling the pain, that is information for the doctor, not a reason to double it at home.

Movement, eating and the ordinary things

• Get the patient sitting up and, where the surgeon allows, walking short distances early. Immobility after surgery is what causes clots.
• Deep breathing exercises several times a day — ten slow deep breaths every hour while awake — prevent chest infection more effectively than any medicine.
• Protein matters for wound healing. Eggs, daal, chicken, yoghurt. Appetite is often poor; small frequent meals work better than three large ones.
• Constipation is almost universal after surgery, mostly from painkillers and immobility. Fluids, fruit and, if the doctor agrees, a mild laxative prevent a great deal of misery.
• Watch for calf pain or swelling in one leg — that needs a doctor the same day.

When to bring in a nurse

Not every post-operative patient needs professional help at home. Bring in a nurse when there is a drain or catheter in place, when IV antibiotics are to be continued at home, when the wound is large or the dressing is complex, when the patient is diabetic (which slows healing and raises infection risk considerably), when the patient is elderly and cannot transfer safely, or simply when nobody at home is able to do the dressing properly.

The commonest arrangement is short and defined: a nurse every day or every second day for one to three weeks, then a final visit to remove the sutures. It is charged per visit, and we quote the whole course at the outset so the family knows the total rather than being surprised weekly.

A note for families in Lahore

If you have been discharged from Services Hospital, Ganga Ram, Ittefaq, CMH, Doctors Hospital or Shaukat Khanum, we take a steady flow of post-operative cases from all of them and know the standard follow-up plans well. Send us the discharge summary on WhatsApp at 0302 5286596 and we will tell you what care the plan actually requires — including when the answer is that you can manage it yourselves.