Prehab: because it is better to cure physical fitness before an intervention

Among the many reasons why it is good to do physical activity and follow a healthy diet, there is one that perhaps we would never have thought: guarantee a better convalescence following an operation. This too should be put in the account of the benefits: a study published on British Medical Journal states that Pre-rehabilitation (PREHAB) can reduce complications and duration of the hospitalization after surgeryalso improving physical recovery. Scholars arrived there after examining over 15,000 patients, who participated in 186 clinical studies all over the world.

Prehab operating

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The types of prehab have been taken, including exercise, diet, psychological support, cognitive training alone or combined with each other. The discovery is that Exercise is the most promising, followed by the diet. “When we have to undergo surgery, it is good to ask for information on pre-rehabilitation,” admits Daniel Mcisaac, anesthesiologist at the Ottawa Hospital and author of the study. “If we manage to Increase the levels of physical activity and the intake of protein For a few weeks before the intervention, we could recover faster afterwards. “

Prehab is not new: he dates back to the Second World War and the first to use it was the British army. The term was then adopted by the medical community and pre-rehabilitation has become an important research area in the last 30 years. “We know that Those who are in the best physical form tend to recover faster from the intervention and to have less complications“, Mcisaac points out.” Unfortunately many patients, encouraged by their doctors, would like to improve their physical shape before the intervention, but often they don’t know where to start. The goal of our research program is to develop a simple and effective approach to pre-rehabilitation that can help the greatest number of patients to improve their surgical recovery and return home faster after intervention “.

300 million interventions

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That of Canadian scientists is a necessity supported by the numbers: more than 300 million surgical interventions are performed every year in the world and More than 20 percent of patients undergoing important operations suffers from post-operative complications. Hence the need to get to the intervention in the best possible form: “We are sure that if patients can do the pre-rehabilitation work, it is likely that they benefit from it”, Mcisaac admits. “The question is how can we provide a pre-rehabilitation that works for all surgical patients? Should currently provide more rigorous tests to support a wider implementation”.

The next step of the researchers will be to understand if it is possible to create a program of exercises and diet to be performed a few months before an operating intervention, based on your skills. “The options that include exercise and nutrition – concludes the study – are more likely to mitigate post -operating complications, the duration of the hospitalization, the quality of life related to health and also physical recovery”.