Prehabilitation for Upper Gastrointestinal Tract Cancer Surgery

Patients receiving surgery of upper gastrointestinal tract are often elderly, frail, malnourished, with poor functional reserve. They are associated with poor post-operative outcomes.

This multimodal treatment is associated with considerable morbidity and decline of patients' functional capacity due to sarcopenia and malnutrition. The poor outcomes can lead to a prolonged delayed recovery, hospital stay, and disability. The post-operative morbidity, especially cardiopulmonary complications, remains substantial. Prehabilitation before surgery can improve the functional capacity of patients to better withstand the stress of surgery.

In this perspective, prehabilitation has gained increasing popularity as it consists of various interventions that aim to optimize patient's preoperative condition. The rehabilitation programmes varies considerably. To maximise the benefits that can be accrued in the pre-operative period, prehabilitation programmes should be multimodal, including exercise and nutritional support. Increasing the maximal aerobic capacity by training before surgery, improves patients' functional capacity and should allow patients to better withstand the postoperative stress response.

Prehabilitation has been trialled in a range of surgical specialities, including colorectal, breast, hepatobiliary, bariatric, urological, thoracic, and orthopaedic surgery. In major abdominal surgery, multiple studies have indicated that prehabilitation improved preoperative functional capacity and postoperative outcomes. There is a large body of evidence for prehabilitation in patients undergoing intra-abdominal surgery, with studies reporting improvements in pre-operative cardiopulmonary fitness, and reductions in post-operative complications.

The data on prehabilitation after surgery for upper gastrointestinal tract are scarce and ambiguous and these studies often lacked a multimodal approach. The evidence of prehabilitation in Taiwan is scarce also. Surgery for upper gastrointestinal tract has a high morbidity and is associated with a prolonged recovery so there is significant potential to improve outcomes in this high-risk population. However, there are few studies of prehabilitation in surgery for upper gastrointestinal tract.

Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of a multimodal personalised, prehabilitation program on postoperative recovery and morbidity in patients undergoing surgery for upper gastrointestinal tract.