All Videos (MUMH)
How Your Heart Works
Your heart is an amazing organ. It beats about 100,000 times every day, to move blood around your body. As your heart beats, blood c...
Smart Grocery Shopping
It’s important to know how to shop for your groceries in a smart and heart-healthy way. The following tips are ways for you to shop...
Label Reading
An important part of smart grocery shopping is reading food labels, also known as the “Nutrition Facts.” Because the food you eat is...
Risk Factors for Heart Disease
Some of the biggest risk factors that can lead to heart disease you can control, like what you eat and how much physical activity yo...
Smoking Risk Factors
If you smoke, you probably know it damages your body in a lot of ways. For one thing, smoking lowers the amount of oxygen that goes...
Visitor Information (MUMH)
We know it can be hard on friends and family during a patient’s stay in the hospital. To help us continue caring for patients when p...
Your Healthcare Team (MUMH)
Our goal is to take the best care of you, and to do that there is a whole team of people whose job is to help care for you. Your hea...
How to Prepare One Week Before Surgery
We care about your experience with us, so we have put together some patient education materials that will help you prepare for surge...
The Morning of Surgery
When you get to the hospital the morning of your surgery, your first stop will be the admissions area for cardiac surgery, where you...
How to Prepare the Morning Before Surgery
The bullets below are a summary of what you’ll need to do the morning of your surgery to be ready. If you have any questions before...
Why Do I Need Surgery?
Heart surgeons do heart surgery to treat conditions that can’t be fixed any other way. Sometimes making lifestyle changes and taking...
Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG)
When your heart is working the way it’s supposed to, blood flows continuously throughout your body. It flows from your heart out to...
Heart Valve Surgery
If you’re having heart valve surgery, that means one or more of the valves in your heart isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. So...
How Long Will I Be in the Hospital?
After having cardiac surgery, most people stay in the hospital for about three to five days. Remember, your body went through a lot...
Right After Your Surgery
Right after surgery, you’ll move from the operating room to a special intensive care unit for heart surgery patients. After two to f...
How to Use an Incentive Spirometer
After surgery, since you won’t be moving around like you usually do, you’ll need to exercise your lungs to keep them healthy. Using...
A Couple Days After Surgery
A day or two after your surgery, you’ll start to move around more, increasing your activity and self-care as you’re able. You’ll sit...
Vitamin K and Warfarin
If your doctor has told you to take a blood thinner, called Warfarin or coumadin, to help avoid blood clots, it is important to know...
Diabetes Medications
After your surgery, it’s possible that your blood sugar could be higher than normal. The sugar in your blood is your body’s main sou...
Cholesterol Medicine
High levels of cholesterol can be harmful to your body, and if you have trouble lowering your cholesterol with diet and exercise, yo...
Blood Thinners
Once you’ve had cardiac surgery, your doctor may suggest that you take a blood thinner. Blood thinners help blood flow by preventing...
ACE Inhibitors
Ace inhibitors and angio receptor blockers, or ARBs, are medications that relax your blood vessels and help put less stress on your...
Antiarrhythmics
Antiarrhythmics are medications that are used to help with heart rhythm problems. The main job of antiarrhythmics is to keep your he...
Beta Blockers
Medications for controlling your blood pressure and heart rhythm can also help after you have had a cardiac procedure. One type of m...
Diuretics
After your surgery, your doctor might have you take what’s called a diuretic or a “water pill.” Diuretics help to get rid of extra f...
Pain Medicine
After cardiac surgery, your doctor may give you some medication to help with any pain that you might have. There are different types...
Sleep Medicine
If you have trouble sleeping after your surgery or if you are taking medication that makes it hard to sleep, your doctor may give yo...
Stool Softeners & Laxatives
After your surgery you may be constipated, making it hard for you to go to the bathroom and have a bowel movement. During recovery,...
Your Discharge Instructions Are Important
On your day of discharge, you will be given a packet of information. This packet has your personal care instructions, such as how to...
Day of Discharge
Your discharge planning actually begins the day you arrive at the hospital for your surgery and continues until you leave. On your d...
Home After Your Surgery
Once home after being discharged from the hospital, you want to take it easy at first and rest often to allow yourself the time to h...
Look At Your Incision Daily
You should look at your incision at least once a day. A good time to do this can be before or after you shower. In general, when you...
Do I Call My Doctor?
Your body has been through a lot since your surgery, and you may continue to see some changes as you heal. So when you notice someth...
When to Call 911
Call 911 if you feel like something’s seriously wrong, such as: Severe chest pain that doesn’t go away when you take your medi...
Is This Normal?
After your cardiac surgery, your body is going to feel a little different in the days and weeks after you get home. Some of these ch...
Heart Healthy Changes
After your cardiac surgery, some changes will need to be made in your day-to-day lifestyle to help your long-term health. Some of th...
Eat Less Sodium
Eating less sodium in your diet can really help your heart and your health. Eating too much sodium, or salt, can cause high blood pr...
Eat More Fiber
When making heart-healthy food choices, it’s important to eat more fiber. It helps protect your heart, lower your cholesterol, and i...
Eat More Iron
Your body needs iron, especially after surgery. Some good sources of iron after surgery include spinach, fortified cereals, dried fr...
Walking Plan
When you get home after your surgery, it’s important to have a combination of rest and light physical activity to help your body, an...
Pain After Surgery
Having some pain after a procedure or surgery is normal, but you and your care team can work together to control it. Pain control is...
Eat Healthy Fats
We all know that foods like nuts, fish, and olive oil are good for you and that processed foods like cookies, chips, and crackers ar...
Pain Assessment
Having some pain after a procedure or surgery is normal. To help your care team understand how much pain you have, throughout the da...
Drug Free Methods for Controlling Pain
Unfortunately, we all have to deal with physical pain sometimes. It may be chronic, from an ongoing condition like back pain or head...
Pain Control- Drug Methods
If you have pain after having a procedure or surgery, good pain control is important to keep you comfortable and to help you get wel...
TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement)
Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (also known as TAVR or TAVI) is a minimally invasive surgical procedure where a new valve is...
What Is Cardiac Rehabilitation?
The goal of cardiac rehabilitation, or rehab, is to help you get heart healthy. If you’ve had a heart event, your doctor may recomme...
How to Prepare One Day Before (MUMH)
The bullets below are a summary of what you’ll need the day before surgery to be ready. If you have any questions before surgery, fe...