FAQ

To get an assessment for treatment at Tyks Orto, you need a referral to specialized healthcare. To obtain a referral, visit your own health centre, occupational health clinic or a private practice. The doctor will write you a referral to the hospital, if examination or treatment of your condition requires it.

Tyks Orto is part of the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland. You can view Varha’s customer fees here.

Patients are not billed separately for imaging examinations or procedures performed in the wellbeing services county that are part of their treatment, in addition to the visit or treatment day fee.

A specialist doctor will evaluate the referral within three weeks of its arrival. After this, you will receive a letter detailing your treatment plan.

Options may include:

• Invitation for examination or specialized healthcare
• Returning the referral with instructions to the doctor who sent you

We will inform you in the invitation letter where and when you need to arrive for examination, doctor’s appointment, or treatment. The decision on possible surgery is made jointly by the doctor and the patient during the appointment.

You can usually get an appointment/examination within three months of the referral’s arrival. The doctor will assess the urgency of your case based on the referral.

Do not eat solid food after midnight the night before the operation. Do not eat candy or pastilles either. During the night, you can drink clear liquids such as water, clear juices, tea, or coffee without milk, up to one glass at a time once an hour. Stop drinking liquids at 6 am.

Do not consume alcohol for 24 hours before coming to the hospital. Stop using chewing gum and tobacco products at least 2 hours before coming to the hospital.

Food in the stomach increases the possibility of nausea related to anesthesia and may cause adverse events during anesthesia (stomach contents can enter the lungs). Sometimes anesthesia may be necessary even if the procedure was planned to be done under local anesthesia.

The aim is for you to be ready for surgery immediately upon arrival at the hospital. Failure to adhere to fasting times may lead to the procedure being postponed to another time.

All herbal products must be stopped at least two weeks before surgery. Remember to mention the herbal products you use during the pre-surgery call/visit.

Ensure that the skin in the surgery area is healthy and intact. Scratches, pimples, and skin lesions increase the risk of infection and can be a barrier to surgery. The surgical wound heals best when the skin in the surgery area is healthy. Healthy and clean skin is the most important protection against post-surgical infections. Therefore, it is very important to take good care of your skin before surgery, for example, by washing and moisturizing it. Do not moisturize the skin in the surgical area on the morning of the surgery.

Take a shower before coming to surgery.

If you have hair in the surgical area, do not remove it yourself before surgery.

Avoid excessive sun exposure before surgery, especially on the skin in the surgery area.

Lower limb surgery is usually done under spinal anesthesia. In this case, the skin on the back must be healthy. Moles do not prevent spinal anesthesia.

If you are coming for hand surgery:

• Cut your nails the night before.
• Remove nail polish the night before.
• Wash your hands thoroughly on the morning of the procedure.

Wear clean, easy-to-put-on clothes when coming for surgery.

If you are having lower limb surgery, we advice to choose wide-legged, stretchy pants.

When coming for hand or shoulder surgery, wear a loose shirt that opens from the front.

We have four-person, two-person, and single rooms. Your bed placement depends on the ward’s patient situation. Whenever possible, we take requests into consideration.

Doctors are generally available on weekdays from 8 AM to 4 PM. At other times, on-call doctors are responsible for patient care.

You can go home from the hospital as soon as your condition allows. Discharge is also possible on weekends. The most important thing is that you are discharged safely and that you have good informational, physical, and psychological conditions for it.

The conditions for managing at home are as follows:

• Your pain is under control
• Your nausea is under control
• You can drink and eat
• You can move independently (if necessary, with the help of an aid such as crutches)

MyHealth (omavointi.fi) is an electronic survey service used at Tyks Orto. With MyHealth, we collect information about your well-being, functional capacity, and quality of life before and after treatment. The purpose of collecting this information is to better plan your care and to improve and develop our services in the future. You will receive instructions on how to use the MyHealth service at the beginning of your care at Tyks Orto.

At Tyks Orto Surgical Hospital, visiting hours are from 12 PM to 7 PM. For the Trauma department located in the T-hospital, visiting hours are from 1 PM to 7 PM. You can check the visiting hours for other locations through this link.

We recommend that no more than two or three close relatives visit at the same time. Suitable gifts include books, magazines, or small snacks.

Avoid visiting if you (or someone at home) have a cold, cough, or any other contagious illness. Strong fragrances are not suitable for the hospital. Our staff will be happy to provide additional instructions related to visits.

Bringing flowers to Tyks Orto departments is no allowed.

If it is planned that you will be discharged on the day of surgery, arrange for an adult to pick you up and accompany you home after surgery and stay with you for the evening and night after surgery.

You are not allowed to drive a car for at least 24 hours after surgery. Additionally, the procedure may restrict driving for a longer period. You will receive additional instructions if necessary.

If you are discharged later than the day of surgery, an escort is not necessary. When going home by your own car, you may still need a driver. This varies depending on the procedure. For example, knee patients can go home by their own transport or taxi. Hip patients go home by accessible taxi or stretcher taxi if the journey home is long.

If you go home by taxi, the nurse will order the transport from the Kela taxi center, and the departure time will be agreed upon together with the patient. The deductible for Kela taxis is €25.

For child patients, in addition to the driver, another escort is required for the journey home.

If necessary, you can contact the social services of your home municipality to assess possible home help well in advance of surgery.

If you need the services of special workers such as a social worker, patient ombudsman, or hospital chaplain, the staff will arrange a meeting after surgery.

You will get aids from the aid lending service of your own health center. In the hospital, you will be informed about the aids you will need.

Post-surgical pain has an important role: it protects the body and warns of impending tissue damage. Surgery always causes some degree of pain, and mild pain can be part of recovery – complete painlessness cannot be guaranteed. However, pain stronger than mild pain has harmful effects on recovery, and therefore we do everything to ensure adequate pain relief.

Pain is an individual and personal experience for everyone, and pain experiences cannot be compared. Pain experienced after different procedures is different, and different people may experience very different pain after similar surgery. Several factors affect pain experience, such as previous pain experiences, diseases, and the size and location of the surgery.

In the hospital, your pain is assessed according to the situation: initially several times an hour and less frequently as the pain subsides. The intensity of the pain is recorded in the patient records to monitor changes in your condition and assess the effectiveness of the treatment. The determination of pain intensity aims to find suitable pain relief methods.

Pain medication is prescribed for home after surgery. Medication is determined individually. It is very important that you use pain medication according to the instructions you receive. Effective pain management prevents chronic pain, i.e., pain becoming long-term, and promotes recovery.

In addition to pain medication, other pain relief methods include cold therapy and positional therapy. Before discharge, you will be instructed on the use of these methods.

You can contact the unit that treated you. You will receive the unit’s contact information upon discharge. Usually, the doctor will write additional medication for home electronically if the medications already prescribed from the ward do not seem to be enough for the pain. Before contacting the ward, check that you have taken the pain medications prescribed for you at home according to the instructions and tried other pain relief methods such as cold therapy and rest.

It cannot be precisely defined how long pain medications need to be used, as the need for pain medication is very individual after surgery.

Pain can occur for several months after surgery, but it is most intense a few days after surgery.

Herbal products should not be consumed simultaneously if you are using blood clot prevention medication to reduce the risk of bleeding. After the ending the medication, you can start using herbal products normally.

Swelling occurs already while in the ward, but at home, the swelling may increase. If swelling occurs especially in the calf area, contact the ward that treated you or your own health center.

Swelling is individual and depends on the procedure performed. To prevent and treat swelling, it is good to use cold therapy and rest the limb elevated.

After surgery, it is important to monitor and care for the surgical wound correctly to prevent infection. The wound is closed either with stitches or staples and covered with a wound dressing. Dissolvable stitches do not need to be removed. You will receive separate instructions for removing other stitches. Wound care instructions are individual and depend on the surgery performed on you. You will receive individual instructions for wound care upon discharge.

Contact the unit that treated you if there is:

• Increasing pain in the wound area
• Increasing swelling
• Redness or warmth
• Purulent discharge or increasing secretion from the wound
• Your temperature is over 38 degrees

Stitches or staples are normally removed at your own health center or occupational health service, where the patient makes the appointment themselves. You will receive instructions for removing stitches upon discharge. Note that your procedure may impose restrictions on movement.

Do not apply any cream to the wound as long as there are staples or stitches on the wound. After their removal, the wound can be moisturized if the skin is intact.

You can take a shower after surgery according to your condition, even immediately, but the wound must be protected with a dressing until the wound secretion has stopped. You will receive individual instructions for wound care in the hospital. Instructions depend on the procedure performed on you.

You will receive personal instructions before discharge. If you need this information before surgery, you can ask your surgeon.

Some surgeries, such as hip and knee replacement surgeries, have recommended restrictions on air travel. You can ask your doctor for more detailed information if you plan to travel after surgery. When traveling by plane, always remember the risk of venous thrombosis.

Metal detectors may react to the joint replacement. However, a separate certificate is not required at the airport nowadays.

At the beginning of your treatment, you will receive contact information of the unit treating you.

Tyks Orto also has a chat service channel where you can ask general questions to a customer service representative on weekdays from 9 am to 3 pm without a treatment relationship. The connection is unsecured, so we cannot handle personal information there. When the chat service is closed, you can leave an email message using the same service channel, which will be answered as soon as possible.

You can give feedback to us either via a paper or electronic feedback form. You can access the electronic feedback form from this link. Paper forms can be found at Tyks Orto departments.

Additionally, we request feedback via text message, which you will receive on your phone after each service event.