7634 Girard Ave Suite #200
La Jolla, CA 92037
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An Overview of Medical Clearances
Your primary care physician is usually the first one to recommend you for surgery.
When you visit your doctor about a particular pain or symptom, they will run some tests on you to determine the cause of the problem. The best-case scenario is that you only need some medicine to treat it. In more serious cases, the doctor will recommend getting surgery to fix it.
However, it is not as simple as making an appointment for the surgery and then going to the medical facility to get the surgery. Your doctor will advise you to undergo a pre-operative medical evaluation to ensure you are healthy enough to receive the surgery. The medical clearance process will involve several steps for identifying and managing any preexisting medical conditions you may have.
The medical clearance process includes the following:
Ensure you answer all medical questions honestly and openly because your physical well-being depends on it. Once the assessments have concluded, you will receive a medical clearance report based on the results. The report will indicate whether you have been cleared for surgery or not.
If you receive the medical clearance, your doctor will schedule a date and time for you to receive the surgery. On the other hand, if you have been denied medical clearance, your doctor will review the reason indicated in the report and make recommendations on how to address the reason for the denial.
Perhaps you must stop taking a particular medication or address another health issue preventing you from getting clearance. Otherwise, your doctor will recommend alternative treatments or procedures to address your primary medical problem.
Here’s an example:
Suppose you wake up one day and notice your knee hurts unexpectedly. You wait a few days for the pain to go away, but it never does. So, you make an appointment with your doctor to find out what is happening with your knee. They run some scanning tests to determine the root cause of the pain.
After the results come back, the doctor concludes that severe osteoarthritis has degenerated your knee beyond the point of what non-surgical treatments can fix. Because of this, the doctor recommends that you undergo knee replacement surgery to eliminate the pain. It is an extensive surgical procedure that will take a long time to recover. But if you ever want to walk again without feeling pain, you will need to get this procedure done.
First, your doctor will want you to receive a medical clearance before the procedure because they are worried about whether your heart is healthy enough to handle it. After all, a big surgery like a knee replacement can stress your heart. So, if you don’t have a healthy heart to begin with, the surgery could cause you to have heart complications.
A medical clearance is necessary to protect your health and your life in many cases. If the pre-operative testing determines your heart is not healthy enough, your doctor would recommend alternative options for dealing with the osteoarthritis in your knee.
