Stress of open-heart surgery significantly reduces vitamin D levels, but supplementation helps

The stress of open-heart surgery significantly reduces patients’ vitamin D levels, but aggressive supplementation with vitamin D3, just before and after surgery, can completely eliminate the observed drop in vitamin D, researchers have found. Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City conducted a study called ASSESS-D, in which they discovered two key findings related to vitamin D levels and open-heart surgery: first, that open-heart surgery patients generally have low levels of vitamin D, to begin with, and secondly, that stress associated with the surgery further reduced their vitamin D levels by the time they were