Multimodal prehabilitation, encompassing nutritional supplementation, physical exercise, and psychological support, represents a promising strategy to combat sarcopenia and improve postoperative outcomes in high-risk gastrointestinal surgery patients.
Does prehabilitation improve postoperative outcomes in gastrointestinal surgery patients with sarcopenia?
Prehabilitation represents a promising window of opportunity to optimize the health of surgical patients with sarcopenia, potentially mitigating the risk of postoperative complications.
A growing body of evidence has demonstrated the prognostic significance of sarcopenia in surgical patients as an independent predictor of postoperative complications and outcomes. These included an increased risk of total complications, major complications, re-admissions, infections, severe infections, 30 d mortality, longer hospital stay and increased hospitalization expenditures. A program to enhance recovery after surgery was meant to address these complications; however, compliance to the program since its introduction has been less than ideal. Over the last decade, the concept of prehabilitation, or "pre-surgery rehabilitation", has been discussed. The presurgical period represents a window of opportunity to boost and optimize the health of an individual, providing a compensatory "buffer" for the imminent reduction in physiological reserve post-surgery. Initial results have been promising. We review the literature to critically review the utility of prehabilitation, not just in the clinical realm, but also in the scientific realm, with a resource management point-of-view.
Koh et al. (Fri,) conducted a review in Sarcopenia in gastrointestinal surgery. Multimodal prehabilitation was evaluated. Multimodal prehabilitation, encompassing nutritional supplementation, physical exercise, and psychological support, represents a promising strategy to combat sarcopenia and improve postoperative outcomes in high-risk gastrointestinal surgery patients.