Preparation for Whipple Procedure

My mother is a 67-year old who is currently underweight, anaemic and has a history of hypertension. She is recently diagnosed as having ampullary tumour and requires a Whipple surgery in 10 days. I have not been able to obtain any information about how to prepare her for such a difficult surgery and  I shall be grateful for any advice on how she may prepare her health for the surgery so that the recovery chances are better. Many thanks in advance.

I am a 65 yr. old male that had the Whipple procedure done on Oct. 29, 2008 at Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.  The only real preperation that you can do is find a surgeon that has preformed many of these procedures.  I interviewed three surgeons at different facilities (this is also very important, as after care by the nursing staff is critical), before I made my selection.  I was in hospital 6 days and then sent home.  The first 4 weeks were very difficult in that I was uable to eat that well and was very weak most of the time.  Nov. 29, was my two month anniversary and for the most part I am back to work. eat most anything I want and am starting a treadmill and stationary bike workout therapy.  So, even though medical surgery cannot ever be considered a guareented outcome, I would say that your choice of a very experienced Whipple surgeon and hospital is very, very important to post surgery outcome.  Hope this has helped you.

RMatthews

Thank you the message.

The operation was a success.  To reduce weight loss, the surgeon put her thru 3 days of PTN feeding pre-op and then 2 weeks of PTN feeding post-op. Throughout the hospital stay, the overall weight loss is about 4 to 5 kg only.