Recovery guide Breathing & airway
Breathing exercises after heart surgery
They feel like the least important thing on the discharge sheet. They are closer to the most important. Shallow breathing after chest surgery is what turns a good operation into a readmission.
Posthorax Australia · Reviewed 30 July 2026 · About a 4 minute read
Why they matter so much
During surgery and the hours after it, small areas of lung collapse. That is normal — but they need re-inflating, and only deep breathing does it. If those areas stay closed, secretions pool, and pooled secretions are how chest infections and pneumonia start.
Pain works directly against this. It makes you take small, protective breaths and avoid coughing altogether, which is exactly the pattern that causes trouble. This is why teams treat pain relief and breathing exercises as one intervention rather than two.
How to do them
Your physiotherapist will give you a routine, usually built around a repeating cycle. The version most patients are taught looks like this:
- Sit upright — slumped in bed is the worst position for lung expansion.
- Breathe in slowly through the nose, as deeply as is bearable, and hold for two or three seconds.
- Breathe out gently through the mouth. Repeat three to five times.
- Then one supported cough: brace the chest firmly first, and cough from deep rather than clearing your throat.
- Rest, then repeat the cycle roughly every hour while you are awake.
Bracing the chest first
A cough drives the two halves of the divided breastbone against each other, and that is what hurts. Bracing takes the movement out of it. In hospital you will be shown to hug a folded towel or pillow against the chest; at home the same job is done continuously by a fitted support vest, which is why patients wearing one report that coughing becomes possible rather than dreaded.
If anything from an incentive spirometer to a support garment is not making the exercises easier, say so — there is usually an adjustment that helps.
What to tell your team
Report a cough that becomes productive with coloured sputum, a fever, new or increasing breathlessness, or pain that prevents you doing the exercises at all. Any of these is a reason to be assessed rather than to push on quietly. In an emergency call 000.
Questions patients ask
+How often should I do breathing exercises?
Most teams ask for a cycle roughly every hour while awake in the first weeks, tapering as your activity increases. Your physiotherapist’s schedule takes priority over any general advice.
+It hurts too much to cough. What do I do?
Brace the chest before you cough — a pillow, your arms, or a fitted support vest — and take the pain relief you were prescribed on schedule rather than late. If you still cannot cough effectively, tell your team; that is a problem to solve, not to endure.
+Do I still need them once I am home?
Yes, until your team says otherwise. The risk of chest infection does not end at discharge, and the exercises also rebuild the breathing capacity that weeks of shallow breathing cost you.
Who writes this, and what it is not
Written by Posthorax Australia, the Australian distributor of the POSTHORAX® range, for patients and families after cardiac surgery. General recovery guidance reflects standard postoperative practice; claims about the device come from the trials cited on our clinical evidence page.
We are not your treating team and this is not medical advice. Where anything here conflicts with your surgeon, GP, physiotherapist or cardiac rehabilitation service, follow them.
Reviewed 30 July 2026 · Corrections: sales@posthorax.com.au