Diet Tips after Cardiac Surgery

Hi, my name is Lisa DeManch. I'm the unit-based educator and registered nurse for cardiac surgery here at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. I'm going to talk to you today about diet after open heart surgery. You're encouraged to follow a heart-healthy diet after surgery, which includes a diet low in fat, cholesterol, sugar, salt and sodium. In your discharge packets, we've included an insert called heart-healthy food choices, which explains in greater detail a heart-healthy diet. It's not unusual to have a poor appetite after undergoing open heart surgery. You may feel that food just doesn't taste right. This can be due to medications you're now on and even anesthesia. However, proper nutrition is important in promoting healing and getting your strength back. Your appetite should improve over time. Until it returns, try eating small, frequent, nutritious meals or snacks and plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. After surgery, the demands for protein are much higher for your body to help build collagen and repair tissue. So make sure you choose foods high in protein, such as eggs, fish, nuts and seeds, peanut butter, soy and hummus. When eating packaged foods, it's important to read the nutrition facts label and understand what it means. For example, foods may say low fat or even fat-free, but they may be high in sugar and sodium. Labels that say reduced sodium or no salt added may also have a high sodium content. Salt contains sodium, so just because there's no salt in it doesn't mean that there's no sodium. This is an example of a nutrition facts label for soup. In it, it contains 660 milligrams of sodium in one serving. The reduced sodium version of this soup has 480 milligrams of sodium. Your goal when eating packaged foods should be closer to 140 milligrams or less of sodium per serving and limited to 1,500 to 2,000 milligrams a day. When possible, you should always try eating fresh foods over packaged foods, not adding table salt to your food, eating fresh home-cooked meals instead of eating restaurant meals and paying attention to serving sizes. For the majority of cardiac surgery patients, you will have gained 10 to 20 pounds of fluid during your surgery in the immediate post-operative period. This can cause strain on the heart. While we will give you a medication called Lasix to help get rid of this extra fluid, you also can do your part by maintaining a diet low in sodium so your body doesn't hold on to the excess fluid. Basically, be mindful of what you eat and know that this doesn't mean you can never eat desserts or salty snacks again, but these types of foods should be eaten in moderation. Finally, if your appetite is not improving or you're experiencing nausea and you're not eating, you should call your surgeon's office.