Hydration

[Veline]

why is it that my ECP and my Cardiologist are sooo damn set on my drinking water after surgery... i don't get it!!

[lapopessa]

My Atrial Fibrillation started in 2000 with dehydration! It can be a very bad trigger for this - you get in AFib and it does NOT go away. It comes and goes (lone afib), but isn't cured. You do NOT want to start down that road. If I knew then what I know now I would never, EVER have gotten as dehydrated as I did (was touring around a city in August not bothering to keep hydrated). Follow your doctor's instructions - they are IMPORTANT!

[cindy707]

The main reason that your doc wants you to stay hydrated is because with rhythm issues one of the big no no's is dehyration because it can set off episodes of issues that you don't want to revisit.  Altho Ireneo is on it w. the IV issue sounds to me like they are just trying to give you the best chance possible of no reoccurances or it could actually be the other end of the spectrum and they are ecouraging your kidneys to flush thru with the extra fluids which is a great thing because its like a cleaning for your body.  In most cases hospitals don't like to release patients until they have had a specific output of urine and a bowel movement after any surgery just for the basic reasoning of what can happen to the patient and they go home and their bowels are not moving and the urine is still trapped in the body which is def.not a good thing.  Its like cleaning or flushing anything the theory is the same and the benefits primarily are the same....the output from an IV and the output from urination from physically drinking fluids are different believe it or not and flush thru our systems differently...............hope this helped

[ireneo]

I'm not sure since they usually have an IV going at the same time. That provides fluids as well as a port for medications they may use.  Maybe it's to make sure you can swallow well. I'm curious - why does it bother you so much?