Planning Your Surgery

Below you will find some helpful preoperative instructions and information.

General Preoperative Instructions

If you have medical conditions and are on prescribed medications, you should have your regular general doctor give you medical clearance.

1 week prior to surgery

• Stop taking any over the counter aspirin or aspirin-like products (Baby Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Naprosyn, Advil, Motrin, Aleve, St. John’s Wort). If you have questions about whether one of your medications is an aspirin-like medication, please give us a call.
• If you are on blood thinners like Warfarin, Coumadin, Xarelto, etc, please make sure that we are aware of it.
• If you are currently on Vicodin, Norco, Darvocet, or another narcotic medication, decrease the use or stop taking it at this time. We use these types of medications to manage your postoperative pain. Medications that should be stopped before surgery include (click).

Night before surgery

• DO NOT EAT or drink anything after midnight of the day of your procedure or your surgery could be canceled. You may have a sip of water with your medication. Take only the medications that your doctor said is okay to take
• Make a list of your current medications, past surgical procedures and medical problems to bring with you the morning of surgery. This information will be for the anesthesia team. Let them know of any issues you have had with anesthesia.
• Take a shower or bath the night before or morning of surgery.
• Outpatient surgery: Make arrangements for someone to come with you to your surgery. You will need someone to drive you home. The expected wait time will be at least 6 hours from the time you arrive at the hospital until the time of discharge.
• The hospital will contact you the evening a day or two before surgery to tell you what time to report to the hospital. If you were not called by 2PM the day before your surgery, please call the University of Illinois-Chicago at 312-996-1300 or Weiss Memorial Hospital at 773-564-7760