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What is the recovery period after a vascular surgery?
My father needs to have vascular surgery for his large abdominal aortic aneurysm. He is pretty active, and wants to be back playing on his softball team after the surgery, only shortly after. But I don't think he should. How long does it take to normally recover from vascular surgery?
7 Answers
Many of the aneurysms I fix nowadays are fixed minimally invasively with very little downtime. Usually, it requires 24 hours in the hospital and no activity limitations after 1 week.
It really depends on the kind of repair. If it is open repair with a large abdominal incision, he will need at least 6 weeks. If he has stents, recovery is shorter, up to 4 weeks if he has cuts in the groin and 2 weeks if he has puncture wounds in the groin.
Open abdominal surgery requires a few months before resuming sports. Endovascular procedures have much shorter recovery, maybe 3 weeks
It depends on how it is fixed. If fixed endovascularly (less invasive and through small incisions in the groins) it is possible he could go back in 2-3 weeks to softball - his surgeon would have to determine this
This will depend upon the type of repair that he has. An open repair will take 1-2 months to fully recover, whereas an endovascular repair is only a few days.
Endovascular repair of an aortic aneurysm should allow him to leave the hospital after 1 day. He can resume normal activities after a week, in my opinion.
So, abdominal aortic aneurysm can be repaired either endovascular or open. If it's endovascular, I'd do percutaneous and he will be walking out of the hospital next day with only the limitation of no lifting heavy weights for a few days, but can carry out most of the activities. No, if the repair is open, then he will be out for a few weeks and gradually coming back to normal over about a 3-month period.
Hope this helps.
Ramandeep Sidhu, MD, FACS, RPVI