Microsurgery / Reattachment Aftercare Instructions
A day-by-day recovery guide for microsurgery / reattachment: what to expect, how to care for yourself, and when to call. Free to read and print.
What to expect
Your Procedure Determines Your Care
- •This hand or limb reconstruction draft stays intentionally conditional because closure, reconstruction method, site, devices, and anesthesia change aftercare.
- •Your surgical team's exact written instructions are the source of truth for this procedure.
Do Not Borrow Another Procedure's Timeline
- •Dressing changes, support devices, positioning, therapy, and return to activity require procedure-specific clinical decisions.
- •Contact the clinic if this plan does not match the operation, dressings, devices, or instructions you received.
Microsurgery / Reattachment recovery, day by day
Your hand or limb reconstruction protocol
- Use the exact written home-care instructions from your surgical team. This draft does not replace the operation-specific plan they approved for you.
- Keep the hand or limb dressing, splint, pins, or protective device in the exact position set by your surgical team. Do not remove or adjust it yourself.
- Take only the medicines and doses in the plan from your surgeon or prescribing clinician. Ask before adding, stopping, or changing a medicine.
Driving, support, and position
- If you received sedation or general anesthesia, do not drive and follow the adult-escort and home-support plan from your surgical team.
- If you received local anesthesia only, drive only when your clinic says it is safe and the dressing, pain, vision, movement, and medicines do not impair you.
- Elevate the hand or limb only in the position and for the duration your surgeon prescribed, while keeping the repair protected.
Protect the surgical area
- Do not use a sling, splint, wrap, or compression product other than the device and schedule prescribed for this repair.
- Do not lift, grip, bear weight, or begin motion and therapy exercises until the surgeon or hand therapist assigns them.
- Follow the clinic's closure-specific instructions for stitches, staples, Steri-Strips, skin glue, or an open wound. Do not treat these closures as interchangeable.
Watch the right details
- Check exposed fingers or toes as instructed and call promptly for new color, temperature, feeling, movement, or swelling changes.
- Call the surgical team if a dressing becomes soaked, displaced, too tight, or wet before its planned change.
- Avoid soaking and do not start ointment, silicone, massage, or other wound products until the surgical team approves them for this closure and site.
Procedure-specific follow-up
- The surgical and therapy teams control splint changes, wound checks, motion, strengthening, and return-to-use milestones.
- Keep every scheduled wound, dressing, device, reconstruction, and therapy visit that applies to your operation.
- Do not advance lifting, exercise, driving, work, or other activity until your team clears that activity for this procedure.
Continue the approved plan
- Continue wound, device, support, therapy, and activity instructions until the responsible clinical team changes them.
- Start scar care and sun protection only after the area is fully closed and your clinical team gives a site-specific plan.
- Ask for reassessment if pain, swelling, function, skin color, or the wound is getting worse instead of improving.
When to call your provider or 911
- •Call 911 now for trouble breathing, chest pain, fainting, confusion, or swelling of the face or throat
- •Call your surgical team promptly for bleeding that does not stop after following their pressure instructions or for rapidly increasing swelling
- •Call your surgical team for fever or chills, spreading redness or warmth, pus, new odor, wound opening, or pain that is worsening instead of improving
- •Call your surgical team immediately for new loss of movement or feeling, or fingers or toes that become pale, blue, cold, or increasingly painful
When in doubt, call your clinic. For a medical emergency, call 911.
Recovery milestones
- Day 3
Early Surgical Review
Confirm the operation-specific dressing, wound, support, position, and medicine plan with the surgical team.
- Day 14
Recovery Progress Check
Notice what is improving, unchanged, or worsening. Contact the care team if symptoms are getting worse or the next step is unclear.
- Day 60
Recovery-Plan Review
The responsible clinical team reviews healing and decides whether restrictions, therapy, support, or scar care should change.
For clinics
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QR Rx sends this exact microsurgery / reattachment recovery plan to every patient, branded to your practice, opened by a QR code. It checks in automatically, answers post-op questions, asks for a review at the right moment, and brings patients back for their next visit. The aftercare you already owe every patient, doing the work of keeping them.
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