Prehabilitation Strategies for Surgical Outcomes
Summary
Prehabilitation encompasses a suite of interventions applied in the interval between surgical decision-making and the operative procedure, designed to enhance a patient’s physiological reserve and psychological readiness. Traditionally focused on exercise training, nutritional optimisation and psychological support, prehabilitation has evolved into a truly multimodal endeavour. Tailored exercise regimens—ranging from aerobic conditioning to resistance training—improve cardiopulmonary fitness and muscle strength, thereby reducing postoperative morbidity and accelerating functional recovery. Nutritional strategies address baseline or surgery-induced protein and energy deficits, while psychological preparation and behavioural counselling promote coping strategies and adherence. Prehabilitation has been shown to shorten hospital length of stay, diminish complication rates and improve patient-reported quality of life across a spectrum of surgical specialties, including oncological, cardiovascular and orthopaedic procedures. The global interest in prehabilitation reflects mounting evidence that a proactive perioperative pathway can shift the paradigm from reactive postoperative rehabilitation to anticipatory optimisation, with benefits extending to health-system sustainability and equitable access through scalable telemedicine and home-based programmes.
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Prehabilitation Strategies for Surgical Outcomes publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in prehabilitation strategies for surgical outcomes across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Prehabilitation: The process of enhancing a patient’s functional and psychological status before surgery through structured interventions.
Multimodal intervention: A combined programme of exercise, nutrition, and psychological support designed to synergistically improve perioperative outcomes.
Functional capacity: A measure of a patient’s ability to perform daily activities, often assessed by tests such as the six-minute walk test.
Cost–utility analysis: An economic evaluation comparing interventions by combining costs with quality-adjusted life years to assess value.
Anaerobic threshold: The exercise intensity at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood, indicating a shift to less efficient energy systems.
References
- Prehabilitation Strategies: Enhancing Surgical Resilience with a Focus on Nutritional Optimization and Multimodal Interventions. Advances in Nutrition (2025).
- Cost-effectiveness of prehabilitation prior to elective surgery: a systematic review of economic evaluations. BMC Medicine (2023).
- Effects and duration of exercise-based prehabilitation in surgical therapy of colon and rectal cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology (2022).
- Efficacy of Prehabilitation Including Exercise on Postoperative Outcomes Following Abdominal Cancer Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Surgery (2021).
- Re-designing the pathway to surgery: better care and added value. Perioperative Medicine (2017).
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