Surgical prehabilitation in older and frail individuals: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Older individuals who are scheduled for elective procedures often have co-morbidities at baseline and may be classified as frail. Both older age and frailty are associated with poor fitness and preoperative deconditioning, which can be predictors of postoperative complications. Prehabilitation aims to improve preoperative health in order to reduce complications and expedite postoperative recovery. To date, the effect of prehabilitation on improving outcomes in older and frail individuals is unclear, and the evidence in support of multi-modal treatments is evolving. METHODS: In this scoping review, searches of PubMed and Cochrane Library between August 2012 and August 2022 were performed to identify studies investigating the efficacy of prehabilitation prior to surgical procedures. RESULTS: A total of 36 articles were included in the review. Most of these examined the efficacy of unimodal (n=21) prehabilitation interventions, most commonly exercise therapy. Multimodal prehabilitation programs (n=15) included a variety of intervention components (e.g., exercise training, nutrition, psychological intervention or geriatric consultation). The most commonly studied populations were patients with gastrointestinal cancer (mostly colorectal cancer). Exercise therapy and multimodal interventions are likely to be of greatest impact on postoperative functional decline in patients awaiting total knee or hip arthroplasty, and cancer-related resection surgery (e.g., due to colorectal, gastric or lung cancer) in older and frail patients. CONCLUSIONS: Presurgical prehabilitation showed the potential to diminish postoperative outcomes in older and frail patients prior to surgery. However, adequately powered, randomized controlled, assessor blinded intervention trials demonstrating overall benefit of prehabilitation are needed. AIMS: This scoping review aims to summarize the current literature on the efficacy of prehabilitation in older and frail individuals who are undergoing surgical procedures in order to support clinical protocols and inform future research.