Prehabilitation and education in major abdominal and thoracic surgery reduces length of stay and ventilation days

INTRODUCTION: Poor cardiopulmonary fitness is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality following major surgery. Targeted prehabilitation interventions with adequate intensity improve cardiopulmonary function. Several systematic reviews have noted the variation in outcomes for prehabilitation, providing poor evidence due to inadequate patient numbers and poor compliance. Our aim was to assess the outcomes of the Preoperative Education and Prehabilitation Program (PrEPP) for patients undergoing major abdominal or thoracic surgery. METHODS: PrEPP is a supervised education and exercise training program twice a week and an at-home exercise program three times a week for up to four weeks. A comparison of outcomes was made using the data collected on each patient in PrEPP with a historical control group. RESULTS: There were 370 patients, 185 in each group. They were matched for age (+/- 10 years), gender, and surgery type. There were significant reductions in prolonged ventilation (>48 hours) from 5.4% to 1.1% (p = 0.03) and mean length of stay (LOS) from 10.2 days to 8.5 days (p = 0.04) in the PrEPP group. The incidence of superficial surgical site infection was also found to be less in the PrEPP group (p = 0.02). There were no significant differences in the incidence of pneumonia (3.8% to 2.7% ), unplanned re-intubation (3.8% to 1.6% ), readmission rate (12.4% to 9.7% ), cardiac events or other post-surgical infections. CONCLUSION: The PrEPP was associated with reduced ventilation days and LOS. Further studies are required to confirm these results.